How to link research, policy and practice in education? To debate and answer this question some 200 participants from the over 400-strong network of an EU-funded EIPPEE project met in The Hague in the Netherlands.

EIPPEE is a networking and knowledge-sharing action to promote the use of evidence and research in the policy and practice of education.

Among the issues touched upon at the conference in the Hague were knowledge centres, technology for evidence use, enabling evidence in practice, studying and assessing use of evidence, stimulating policy-relevant research, using evidence for innovation.

For the ETF the event was an opportunity to present the Torino Process and TORINET, an initiative that supports evidence-based policy making in vocational education and training.
 
Ian Cumming, Senior Knowledge Management Specialist, who attended the meeting, said that the ETF work generated a lot of interest and visibility among the conference participants and within the EIPPEE network.
 
‘It was also great to meet colleagues from the former ETF partner country, now EU Member States, like Slovenia or Romania, and hear that the past work of ETF National Observatories is still recalled as example of good practice, and at the same time to hear from current partners of the recognition of our work together,’ said Mr Cumming.

Representatives from several ETF partner countries were in attendance: Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey and Tunisia.  The ETF plans to bridge the EIPPEE activities and the conference into ETF projects and country work.

On the photo: The Hague (source EIPPEE)