Scholarships give study programmes a ‘European’ dimension
01 Oct 2007
The National Agency for Lifelong Learning to celebrate its launch.
The Dutch National Agency for Lifelong Learning celebrated its launch with an event on 2 October 2007 in Utrecht. The agency is responsible for managing the EU’s Lifelong Learning programme in the Netherlands to promote European mobility and projects in education. The programme makes scholarships available to promote mobility and exchange. The target groups of the scholarships include school pupils, teachers and students in higher education. Scholarships are available not just for study, but also for practical training placements.
Every member state of the EU has a National Agency or is about to launch one
The National Agency in the Netherlands is formed by a partnership of the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education (Nuffic), the European Platform for Dutch Education (EP) and the Centre for Innovation in Vocational, Adult and Continuing Education (CINOP). Nuffic has been designated by the Ministry of Education, Culture & Science as the lead agency in the partnership.
The Lifelong Learning programme includes a number of sectoral sub-programmes all named after great European thinkers. Each of the partners in the National Agency concentrates on the sector relevant to their own field. Nuffic manages the Erasmus programme, which is concerned with student and teacher mobility in higher education. CINOP is responsible for Leonardo di Vinci (practical training places and projects) and for study visits by teachers in professional education. The European Platform covers primary and secondary education through Grundtvig (mobility in adult education), Comenius (European school partnerships) and study visits.
The aim is that by 2012 (when the Erasmus programme will be 25 years old) three million European students will have taken part in Erasmus. Leonardo needs to generate another 80,000 practical training placements. And Grundtvig needs to generate 7,000 exchanges. For Comenius, three million secondary school pupils need to take part in some form of international cooperation.