Aware of the importance of meeting the Lisbon target, Spain is about to make some changes in its higher education system. The government has recently presented to the Senate its reform plan of the Ley Organica de Universidades (LOU), which lists a series of intervention areas to be prioritised if Spain is to make progress in the quality of its education system.

With regard to higher education institutions, the reform foresees the following priorities:

• Focus on lifelong learning (provide the necessary infrastructure to facilitate early school leavers return to education, if so they wish, at any point in life);
• make the higher education system more flexible (so as to facilitate students’ transition between educational levels and between the academic world and the job market);
• give more autonomy to higher education institutions, in line with the practices of the countries with the best results in the field;
• encourage the practice of evaluations and benchmarking, in order for higher education institutions to improve.