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Qualifications RecognitionÚdarás Náisiúnta Cáilíochtaí na hÉireann. National Qualifications Authority of Ireland.

The Bologna Process

 

The Bologna Process aims to create a European Higher Education Area by 2010, in which students can choose from a wide and transparent range of high quality courses and benefit from smooth recognition procedures. The Bologna Declaration (pdf format) of June 1999 has put in motion a series of reforms needed to make European Higher Education more compatible and comparable, more competitive and more attractive for Europeans and for students and scholars from other continents.

In 2003, Ministers with responsibility for higher education gathered in Berlin to review progress in the Bologna Process, and called on each participating country to develop a national framework of qualifications, as well as for the elaboration of an overarching Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area, known as the Bologna Framework.

Ireland was invited to undertake a pilot project of the self-certification of the Compatibility of the Irish National Framework of Qualifications with the ‘Bologna Framework’ in 2005. The Irish Framework was formally aligned, following established criteria and procedures, with the Bologna Framework in November 2006. The document below sets out the verification of the compatibility of the Irish National Framework of Qualifications with the Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area: http://www.nqai.ie/publication_nov2006.html

A number of countries have completed and published the self-certification report as part of the Bologna Process. These reports and further information on the Bologna Process are available from this link