Brussels, 21/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - As is typical of all Education, Youth, Culture and Sports Councils in the month of February, the one on Monday 24 will focus exclusively on education and its contribution to economic growth, jobs and social cohesion under the EUROPE 2020 strategy. The meeting will be chaired by Greek Education Minister Konstantinos Arvanitopoulos.
The ministers will begin by adopting a conclusions document entitled Effective and innovative education and training for investing in skills, which focuses on the need for education and training systems to improve their performance in the fostering of skills so that low-qualified youngsters and adults can gain qualifications that will be useful on the labour market. The results of the ministers' debates will be submitted by the Greek Presidency to the Spring European Council (20-21 March) for the summit's reports on the EUROPE 2020 strategy. The conclusions document is also an initial response to the European Commission's Annual Growth Review for 2014 and two investigations on education, PISA and PIACC, being carried out by the OECD (see EUROPE 10976). The ministers will hold a public debate on skills and employability in the light of the two OECD studies. The Greek Presidency wants the politicians to discuss issues like how to monitor the changes in skill requirements on the labour markets and how education policy can react faster to changes in skill requirements. Two qualified experts will express their views in a contribution to the debate. (IL/transl.fl)