A peer exchange meeting on best practices in combatting academic misconduct and fraud in education was organized between the National Information Centre on Academic Recognition and Mobility of Armenia and the Joint EU/CoE Project “Quality education for all in Montenegro”.

During the meeting, the participants exchanged information about their country contexts, activities and methodologies, key achievements, challenges and factors of success in ensuring ethics and integrity in education in a sustainable way.

In this context, the following good practices were among the ones discussed by the participants:

• Tackling academic misconduct and education fraud requires a long term, comprehensive approach involving all relevant stakeholders – ministries, education institutions, administrators, teaching staff, but also students and the wider community. It is a sensitive topic in any country and it requires the development of a broadly shared culture of ethics and integrity in education.
• It is very important to strengthen the legislative and policy framework for tacking academic misconduct, as it has been done in Montenegro through the Law on Academic Integrity, a key achievement of the Joint EU/CoE Project “Strengthen integrity and combat corruption in higher education” (2016-2019). However, it is equally important to ensure that the policy and legislative framework is enforced and its implementation is monitored by a specialized body. For example, in Montenegro, an Ethical Committee has been established to report annually on the implementation of the law and the current Council of Europe project is supporting its activity.
• The diploma supplement or a higher education achievement report is an effective tool to reduce pressure on students as a key incentive for committing education fraud. The diploma supplement has proven its effectiveness in many contexts, such as in Wales, according to Professor Michael Draper of Swansea University who attended the meeting as a Council of Europe expert. However, for such a tool to have a real impact on graduates’ ability to secure employment, education institutions need to ensure its quality and employers need to be better informed of its purpose.

As the National Information Centre on Academic Recognition and Mobility of Armenia embarks on a Council of Europe supported project to carry out a study and develop a handbook on “Developments and Detection of Education Fraud: Risks and Responses in the COVID-19 Age”, more exchanges between the two projects will be organized to ensure that learning from each other and good practices are shared further.

The event was organised by the Education Department within the framework of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022” and its action on “Quality education for all” in Montenegro.