ANECA at the SIACES Plenary Session and the 2nd EU-CELAC Academic and Knowledge Summit

During the opening of the SIACES plenary session, which is currently chaired by the Argentinean agency CONEAU, Pilar Paneque, Director of ANECA, stressed the importance of the meeting to advance, from a responsible quality perspective, in the consolidation of SIACES and in the strengthening of quality assurance and improvement systems in Ibero-American countries. He also pointed out the opportunity, based on the Memorandum of Understanding between SIACES and the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) ENQA, to take steps in the rapprochement between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean.
 
Throughout the plenary meeting, issues such as the annual report of the SIACES technical secretariat and the progress made in the validation of good practices by member agencies; the implementation of the seal of quality in distance and hybrid education; the project of the Ibero-American Register of Agreements for the Recognition of Degrees; the SIACES training school; and collaboration in the field of peer reviewers were discussed.
 
For her part, Pilar Paneque pointed out the importance of strengthening mutual trust and recognition, the need to take steps towards institutional accreditation, and the advances in the perspective of the evaluation of research and the practice of university teaching and research staff, observing the references of international frameworks such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).
 
SIACES is made up solely of national agencies dealing with quality assurance in higher education in the countries of the Ibero-American region. The highest authorities of each national institution meet periodically with the aim of generating actions and reaching agreements that promote the harmonisation of national systems, the recognition of good practices and mutual trust among the members of the system.
 
ANECA also attended the II Academic and Knowledge Summit of the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean (EU-CELAC), held on 4 and 5 May as a continuation of the dialogue process initiated at the I Summit held in El Salvador in 2017. The main objective of the meeting held in Santiago de Compostela was to promote the construction of a common Euro-Latin American and Caribbean space for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, through the generation of knowledge, the design of common lines of action, the establishment of alliances and stable promotion capacities, integration and bi-regional strategic cooperation. All this in a context of transformation of Higher Education, thus contributing to the development of the EU-CELAC Action Plan agreed by the Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Brussels in 2015.