UK ENIC visits Armenia for ARAQUA 2 project update
Representatives from UK ENIC met with international colleagues in Armenia recently, as part of a project called ‘Road to Automatic Recognition of Higher Education Access Qualifications 2’ (ARAQUA 2).
Co-funded by the European Union and coordinated by the Latvian Academic Information Centre (AIC), ARAQUA 2 brings together ENIC-NARIC offices, higher education and research bodies who are experts in credential evaluation across Europe and Central and West Asia.
It aims to investigate the feasibility of, and potential criteria for, automatic recognition of general secondary education qualifications and vocational education and training (VET) qualifications for access to higher education amongst the partner countries.
It builds on the findings of the preceding ARAQUA project, which ran from 2022 to 2024.
Senior International Education Analysts Samantha Broadbent and Valentyna Krasnoshchok attended the peer-learning activity and project progress meeting, held in Yerevan on 22 April, on behalf of UK ENIC.
Samantha said: “The meeting was an excellent opportunity to speak to the AIC project team, ArmENIC (Armenian ENIC), Higher Education Development National Centre (HEDNC Kazakhstan), MFHEA (Maltese NARIC), National Centre for Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE Georgia), Qualification Agency (QA Serbia) and other partners.
“The project team discussed higher education access qualifications in a range of countries, the principles and concepts of automatic recognition, and information transparency.
“I also chaired a panel discussion with representatives from the Armenian Ministry of Education, Yerevan State University and the American University of Armenia, which explored the need for automatic recognition procedures in Armenia and how they might work in practice.”
Valentyna added: “This second phase of ARAQUA has included representatives from more countries, continuing the progress made previously.
“With its focus on making the recognition of secondary and vocational qualifications for higher education access more consistent across the network, the meeting provided an important opportunity to share good practice, develop common principles, and strengthen mutual trust among participating countries, which will be reflected in the final project report.”
The event is due to be followed up with additional meetings and peer-learning activities in Italy and Malta over the coming year.