Launching Conference of the European Union and Council of Europe

In the framework of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme on "Supporting Education Policies in Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education in Kazakhstan" there was a holding of the launching conference, which took place on September 20-21, 2013 in Astana.

This project on the dissemination of results of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme on "Supporting Education Policies in Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education in Kazakhstan" was launched by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the framework of the ratification by Kazakhstan of the European Culture Convention. From the side of Kazakhstan, one of the organizers of the event was the Independent Kazakh Agency for Quality Assurance in Education.

The objectives of the projects are the following:

• to increase the awareness of heads, teachers, and public as a whole about the European standards in terms of fostering democratic consciousness and education in the field of human rights;
• to disseminate the examples of the best practices in the field of fostering democratic consciousness and education in the field of human rights;
• to assure a higher level of cooperation in the field of education with the member countries of the Council of Europe.

The conference was attended by the representatives of the system of education and international organizations of Kazakhstan, Turkey, Russian Federation, Great Britain, and Germany.

Overall, the number of participants constituted 86 guests.

In the course of this seminar, the participants reviewed presentations of many foreign experts, who shared the experiences of developing the democratic consciousness and education in the field of human rights:

1) Aurelia Bushe, Head of the Branch of the European Union in the Republic of Kazakhstan;

2) Reinhild Otte, former Chair of the Ad hoc Advisory Group on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights (ED-EDCHR), Council of Europe;

3) David Kerr, Director of Educational Programmes, Citizenship Foundation, United Kingdom;

4) Rolf Gollob, the author of manuals on EDC/HRE, Head of the Center for international educational projects of of the pedagogical university of Zurich (Switzerland);

5) Peter Krapf, author of manuals, State Department for education and training of teachers, Germany;

6) Andrey Ioffe, Vice-president of the Association "For Civic Education";

7) Emin Karip, Chairman of the National Council of education in Turkey;

8) Bastian Baumann, Expert of the Council of Europe.

You can read the programme of this seminar here.