On June 17, 2020, the fourth Steering Committee Meeting of the EU-funded Twinning project “Strengthening capacities for quality assurance and governance of qualifications” was held through teleworking.

At the meeting, the parties reported on project achievements, deadlines and challenges in the last quarter of the project. The sides unanimously underlined that despite the COVID 19 pandemic, the project managed to adjust the activities in remote mode unprecedentedly and thanked the Twinning project for committed cooperation and that kind of flexibility. The Beneficiary Project Leader and Director of NCEQE Mrs. Tamar Makharashvili stressed the importance of the Twinning Project in fulfillment of ENQA recommendations and noted that she was happy to declare that part of last quarter achievements of the Centre was linked to the Twinning project. On behalf of Estonian partners, Ms. Heli Mattisen, Director of the Estonian Quality Agency for Higher and Vocational Education (EKKA), Junior Project Leader encouraged the Beneficiary to identify on time thematic analysis topics to plan future missions and to support in due time NCEQE in their ongoing developments.

In the wider perspective of the European Union, Mr. Frank Petrikowski, the Senior Project Leader, German Federal Ministry of Education and Science, shared with the members of the Steering Committee meeting priorities of the German presidency of the Council of the European Union as from July 1, 2020.

RTA, Mr. Cay Etzold and his NCEQE - Counterpart, Ms. Khatia Tsiramua have given an overview about recent project activities.

Deputy Director, Kakhaber Eradze in his closing remarks underlined the benefit for the further development of NCEQE and the education system.

The meeting was attended by the representatives from the beneficiary Institution - National Centre of Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE), Federal Ministry of Education and Science of Germany, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Estonian Quality Agency for Higher and Vocational Education (EKKA), the EU Delegation to Georgia and EU Assistance Coordination and Sectorial Integration Department from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia and the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport.

The EU-funded Twinning project started in July of 2019 and is implemented by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in partnership with Estonian Quality Agency for Higher and Vocational Education (EKKA). Background: Twinning is a European Union instrument for institutional cooperation between Public Administrations of EU Member States and of beneficiary or partner countries. Twinning projects bring together public sector expertise from EU Member States and beneficiary countries with the aim of achieving concrete mandatory operational results through peer to peer activities. For additional information, please see: https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/…/twinning_en