Brussels, 22/05/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday in Strasbourg, the European Parliament gave its opinion on a series of reports on education. Adopting the report by the British Labour MEP J.E. Evans, Parliament amended the Council's Common Position in second reading on the mobility of students, trainees, young volunteers, teachers and trainers. The amendments incorporated references to the Mobility Action Plan and clarified the type of follow-up to be carried out by the European Commission and Member States as required by the Nice Summit of December 2000. The EP also scrapped a pointless and potentially dangerous area of the Council's Common Position which stated that a temporary visit to another country should last for no more than "one year in principle". In his report, Mr Evans regretted that researchers were not covered - the Commission has signalled that it wants to draw up a separate document on the requirements of researchers, following its Communication on a European Research Area.
Three other reports consider:
1. Tomorrow's education, promoting innovation with new technology: adopting the report by the Green MEP Alexander Alavanos (GUE), Parliament 1) regretted that the Commission's report only considered education from the traditional viewpoint of apprenticeship for children and young people in educational establishments and therefore neglects the vital challenge of life-long learning for adults;
2) call for new technologies to be made available to all citizens, including those who are over schooling age; 3) proposes that the education and teaching systems are encouraged in new techniques not only through public funds, but also by private investors; 4) invites the Member States to take steps in order to reduce the price of telecommunications, and notably the cost of Internet access; 5) invite the financial bodies of the EC, such as the European Investment Bank, to take part in the efforts to equip and train, agreed upon by the Member States.
2. White Paper Teaching and Learning: towards a cognitive society: with the adoption of the report by the British Conservative Roy Perry, the Parliament supports the aims of the Commission White Paper; - encourage the acquiring of new knowledge; - bring together schools and companies; - fight against exclusion; - master three Community languages; - treat physical investments and training investments on an equal footing. However, he deplores the absence of truly additional credits allowing to reach these aims. The EP notes that after five years, the Commission has not managed to clearly indicate whether the aims defined in 1995 (see EUROPE of 1 December 1995) have lead to concrete results. The Parliament notably calls on the Commission to: - provide details on the financing of projects relating to second chance schools; - promote the teaching of sign language and equal opportunities between men and women.
3. e-Learning: think of the education of tomorrow (action plan 2001-2004): by adopting the report by Mario Mauro (Forza Italia), the Parliament calls above all on the Member States to provide, by the end of 2003, teachers with a global digital understanding (for details, see EUROPE of 4 May, p.16).