On 18 February 2021, the Council of the EU adopted a lengthy resolution (see EUROPE 12662/15) under the Portuguese Presidency, which lost no opportunity to reiterate the Lisbon Strategy and the open method of coordination. The European Parliament merited just a single mention. The new strategic framework for education and training, which took inspiration from previous versions, was to run for the entire decade (2021-2030): the European Education Area (EEA) was merely its first plank. The concept is summarised in this long sentence: “the European Education Area will allow learners to pursue their studies in different stages of life and to look for employment across the EU, and member states and stakeholders to cooperate, so that high-quality, innovative and inclusive education and training, supporting economic growth and high-quality employment opportunities, as well as personal, social and cultural development, become the reality in all member states and regions across the EU”.
The Council made no reference to the new initiatives announced by the Commission in its communication of 30 September 2020 (see EUROPE 13186/1). To replace the six “dimensions” identified by the Commission, it substituted five strategic priorities valid until 2030: (1) enhancing quality, fairness, inclusion and success for all in the field of education and training, (2) making life-long learning and mobility a reality for all, (3) growing the skills and motivation of the teaching profession, (4) reinforcing European higher education and, lastly, (5) supporting the ecological and digital transitions in and through education and training.
Three quantified targets are identical to those set out by the Commission: the ones on basic skills, competence in ICT and the proportion of higher secondary education graduates. As for the rest, the proportion of those aged between 30 and 34 with a higher level of studies should be at least 45%, instead of 50% as proposed by the Commission; at least 96% (as opposed to the 98% put forward by the Commission) of children aged between three and compulsory schooling age should attend early childhood education and care. The Council adds the following target: the proportion of those dropping out of the education and training system early should be less than 9%. All of this was to be achieved by 2030 at the latest.
There were just two targets to be achieved by 2025 at the latest: the adult learning objective referred to by the Commission, albeit reduced to 47% (from 50%), and a second target of the Council’s own making: the proportion of young graduates of vocational education and training benefiting from exposure to learning in a professional environment during the course of their studies should be at least 60%. This gives a total of seven objectives.
In the form of an annex, the Council drew up an impressive list of specific questions and actions for each of its five priority areas, to cover the period 2021-2025. The Commission is to establish interim reports and a full report on the execution of this first cycle. As regards governance, this period will see the continuation of the tried-and-tested methods used in the ‘Education and Training 2020’ strategic framework. In other words, the ministers have decided not to rubber-stamp the Commission’s administrative innovations. In this dry and complex resolution, the Council is unquestionably taking back control, but even though, as we have seen, the structure of the EEA is not without a certain number of contradictions on the part of Commission, the literature provided by the other institution brings little extra readability. If the notion of “area” disappears after 2025, what will its successor be called?
The European Parliament, the poor relation in this process, made its voice heard with a resolution voted through on 11 November 2021, describing the EEA as an “ultimate goal” that “can and must play an unparalleled role in improving access to and the quality of education throughout the EU”, inclusion being a fundamental aspect here. The members of the European Parliament appreciated the Commission’s efforts, but called for the involvement of all possible stakeholders (parents, unions, youth workers, etc.). They also lamented the lack of interim targets and joint reference criteria. They welcomed the commitment of the Council in favour of vocational training and support for its five strategic priorities, whilst calling for more ambitious targets for low-achieving students and those who drop out of school early. They call for a comprehensive steering, monitoring and evaluation mechanism for the EEA, this time – surprise! – for 2030.
Meanwhile, the Council adopted a resolution “on the governance structure of the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond (2021-2030)”. Instead of creating “unnecessary structures”, this framework should be the same as before, but the activities of all groups should be stepped up. In particular, the Presidency-in-exercise of the Council considers that it should “take the lead role” and coordinate the work of the existing high-level group (Commission + senior national civil servants), supported by a coordination board.
On 18 November 2022, the Commission, having got behind the Council’s objectives, unveiled a lengthy communication on the progress made towards achieving the EEA. It lists the strategic, legislative and other political initiatives in all sectors of education, the projects financed by the EU (teacher academies, coalition for climate education, centre for professional excellence), the active expert groups (disinformation, quality investment, etc.). A new first indicator was proposed, along with a learning laboratory on the quality of investments in education and training. In this document, the EEA becomes an increasingly broad church: the post-Covid 19 recovery plan, digital, volunteering, the ecological transition, solidarity with Ukraine, assistance to the Western Balkans …
The Commission’s Education and Training Monitor 2022, which was published on the same day, shows progress on school dropout rates, the number of higher education graduates and early childhood education, but not on basic skills. Additionally, the shortage of teachers is growing worse.
In conclusion, the Commission takes the view that the EEA is on the right track, but that it is too soon to measure its impact. Its reinforced governance was described as positive.
This optimism does not seem to be entirely shared by the Swedish Presidency of the Council, which flags up a number of challenges (see EUROPE B13166). For this reason, it devised and pushed through a new resolution, which was adopted on 16 May of this year. This resolution stresses the efforts that need to be made to tackle inequality in teaching, with an eye to social inclusion, strengthening basic skills, improving support to teachers, making mobility more effective, increasing the skills of adults and, as regards governance, strengthening the necessary synergies, particularly between the employment committee and its education counterpart.
Another challenge not mentioned in the specific documentation on the EEA concerns the automatic recognition of diplomas and qualifications, even though this was the subject of a Council recommendation in 2018, in which the member states undertook to make this recognition fully effective by 2025. A report published by the Commission on 23 February 2023 sends out a warning signal, particularly for areas other than universities (see EUROPE 13128/28). The Swedish Presidency therefore submitted draft conclusions to the Council working group at the beginning of April) see EUROPE 13157/22). The text was adopted by the ministers in mid-May, on the same day as the recommendation, which incidentally does refer to the problem (see EUROPE 13184/26). The conclusions called upon the member states to make use of all tools at their disposal, to improve training for local decision-makers, to promote the procedure by distributing the relevant information and drawing upon the reciprocal trust between the member states and between education systems. This document is important, because if mutual recognition is not fully applied, there can be no European Education Area.
Finally, there is another objective that seems to have been pushed to one side, even forgotten about altogether: the knowledge of two foreign languages by all young Europeans leaving higher education by 2025. The idea first popped up in the Commission communication of 17 November 2017; the European Council made this target its own in December of the same year. On 22 May 2019, the Council adopted a less ambitious recommendation on a “comprehensive approach to the teaching and learning of languages” (how are we getting on with this?). To give greater substance to the EEA by 2025, this is a very comprehensible target that needs to be revisited.
If the EEA is to be ‘sold’ to the enormous general public it concerns, in such a way that everybody can clearly understand it, there is an imperative need to cut the red tape from the institutional discourse and commit to a number of firm promises by 2025: (1) full freedom of movement for all, based on automatic recognition throughout the EU, (2) a general student card, (3) comprehensive monitoring of graduates, (4) the linguistic goal mentioned above, (5) the achievement of the official quantified objectives on adult education and vocational training and (6) quantified interim objectives leading up to those set a deadline of 2030. The rest is by no means uninteresting and it cannot even be denied that it is urgent, but it is not central to the project. By piling too much into it, the message becomes distorted and failure more likely.
Renaud Denuit