The 5th Plenary Session of the Council of Europe Platform on Ethics, Transparency and Integrity in Education (ETINED) was held on 23 November 2021.

 

The ETINED delegates approved the text of the Draft Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers on countering education fraud and its Explanatory Memorandum that were presented by Prof. Michael Draper of the Working Group on Education Fraud[1].

The Group started drafting a policy framework document in 2018 and met three times in 2019. Throughout 2020, the group worked on the draft recommendation and the development of a draft explanatory memorandum. The purpose of the recommendation would be to promote, develop and encourage quality education free from fraud. Risks that are identified in the preamble to the Draft recommendation include international reputation, national security and public safety, trust placed in the education systems of member states, the economy of each member state, the credibility of regulated professions, equal treatment and opportunities for learning.

Vesna Atanasova, Capacity-building and Co-operation Division, Education Department and Martin Hammerbauer, European Students Union (ESU), presented the Best Practice Programme in Promoting Academic Integrity. The Programme aims at identifying, publicly recognising and disseminating good practices throughout higher education institutions in Europe. For this purpose, the practices were assessed by a panel of independent experts and members of the Council of Europe Secretariat. The selected practices were endorsed by the programme’s Steering Committee. ETINED delegates were invited to attend the online hybrid award ceremony scheduled on 7 December. The practices will be published and disseminated.

The participants discussed in parallel groups five topics to be considered for the future ETINED Programme:

  1. The role of ETINED in facilitating data collection and evaluating and reviewing the implementation of the promoted instruments
  2. The ETINED platform and the role of Codes of Ethics of Higher Education Institutions
  3. The ETINED platform supporting ethics in digital education
  4. The ETINED platform supporting research integrity
  5. The ETINED platform supporting access to education in times of crisis
The outcomes of the discussions are to be taken into account for the next

[1] On 13 July 2022 the Committee of Ministers adopted CM/Rec(2022)18