The Groningen Declaration (GDN) is the declaration of intent signed on 16 April 2012 in Groningen, the Netherlands, at the closure of the Global Founding Seminar on “Digital Student Data Depositories Worldwide”. Digital Student Data Depositories Worldwide or “The Groningen Declaration” as the initiative has come to be known, aims to bring about mobility in the education sector. These make personal educational results securely available to students and skilled workers.
The Groningen Declaration Network annual meeting, brings together a worldwide network of committed stakeholders that are dedicated to making Digital Student Data Portability happen, on a global scale. Citizens worldwide should be able to consult and share their authentic educational data with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever they are.
The GDN aims to establish a more complete and far-reaching student database depository worldwide, this initiative falls in line with ZAQA’s mandate to maintain a database of learner achievements in Zambia.
As this is a worldwide Network; the invitation of ZAQA to the Network will provide an opportunity to establish worldwide linkages for ease of conducting verification services.
The ZAQA Director and CEO, Mrs. Mirriam Chiyaba, who is also the Chairperson of the African Qualifications Verification Network (AQVN), attended the 8th GDN Annual General Meeting (AGM) which was held in Puebla, Mexico, from the 24th to 26th April, 2019, under the theme: Creating the New World for Academic and Professional Mobility
More than 80 organisations from twenty seven countries have signed the Groningen Declaration, which aims to enhance student mobility and provide credential integrity and security for digital student academic data globally, a further 15+ new organisations are slated to sign at the GDN annual meeting in Puebla.
Quoted in the recently issued UNESCO report Digital Credentialing: Implications for the recognition of learning across borders as probably being one of the main convenors in the Digital Credentialing Ecosystem, the Groningen Declaration Network has been promoting the vision that UNESCO urgently calls for in its report, “to reach a common international approach where all aspects of a person’s learning are electronically documented, authenticated and can be accessed at anytime and anywhere, shared and amended by the owner or by an authorized party”. UNESCO deems such convenors crucially important: “This is also the most critical [sector]. International agencies such as UNESCO and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have a role to play, and increasingly so do. The role of the convenors in the digital credential ecosystems is key in this respect” and UNESCO sees the GDN as performing that role alongside UNESCO itself, the World Bank, the OECD, the European Commission, the African Development Bank and other government agencies. The report concludes with the suggestion that UNESCO “consider adopting, in partnership with other organizations, a chart regarding “open learners’ records” in the context of the forthcoming recommendation on Open educational resources (OERs).
Follow the link below to see the full participant list of the 8th GDN AGM
https://www.groningendeclaration.org/participants-2019/
https://www.groningendeclaration.org/
