On Thursday 28 November, to mark Education for Climate Day, the European Commission presented the ‘Education and Training Monitor 2024’.
The report, which takes stock of European education systems, identifies both worrying gaps in young people’s basic skills and progress towards sustainable learning.
Results in reading, maths and science are at historically low levels in the European Union. According to PISA 2022 data, 26.2% of 15-year-olds are struggling in reading, 29.5% in maths and 24.2% in science. These figures, which are higher than in previous years, reflect a persistent trend since 2015 which has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Socio-economic inequalities appear to be a determining factor: pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are six times more likely to underachieve than their advantaged peers. In Romania and Slovakia, for example, these disparities are particularly significant, due to marked school segregation.
In addition, this 2024 edition also focuses on learning for sustainability, which is essential to prepare young people for the green and digital transitions. Yet only 42% of pupils say they have had significant opportunities to learn about sustainability at school.
This figure reflects a certain weakness in current educational approaches, which still focus largely on low-impact actions such as waste collection (83.9% of schools) and neglect crucial skills such as systems thinking and anticipating future challenges.
What is more, initial and in-service teacher training on these issues is still rare.
To meet these challenges, the Commission is relying on its ‘Pathways to School Success’ initiative, as well as an action plan on basic skills. The aim is to improve educational outcomes from early childhood onwards, with a view to reducing the school failure rate to less than 15% by 2030, compared with current levels of over 25% in some subjects.
Finally, the ‘Monitor’ also calls for an urgent response to the teacher shortage. In 2023, 43.1% of young adults in the EU had a university degree, a figure that is rising, but insufficient to meet educational needs, particularly in STEM disciplines.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/ejy (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)