From May 18 to May 19, 2017, in Dushanbe within the framework of the second stage of the Central Asian Education Platform (CAEP), a regional conference "Quality assurance and accreditation in higher and vocational education and training" was held.

The aim of the second stage of the CAEP, funded by the European Union, was to strengthen cooperation between the European Union and Central Asia countries, as well as regional cooperation to reform the education sector.

Representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan, accreditation bodies, the Center for the Bologna process and academic mobility took part in the Kazakhstan delegation. Independent agency for accreditation and rating was represented by Nurakhmetova A.B., manager of post-accreditation monitoring.

The Deputy Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of Tajikistan, as well as heads of groups of the project of the European Higher Education Fair (EHEF), addressed participants with a welcoming speech. Head of the CAEP group, Christian Wagner noted the importance of the meeting of representatives of the countries of the Central Asian region to discuss topical issues of ensuring the quality of higher and professional and technical education.

During the plenary session, representatives of Armenia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan shared their experience in establishing and developing a quality assurance system and social and professional accreditation. In working groups,participants discussed innovative approaches to accreditation, construction of an internal quality assurance system for educational organizations,participation of stakeholders in the evaluation procedure, and etc.

At the end of the conference, a number of issues were identified for discussion in the subsequent activities of the project.