The
Luxembourgish Presidency’s education programme was started with a large symposium
on preventing ESL and promoting school success in Europe on 9th and
10th July. Throughout the event the importance of parents was
highlighted and the participants have discussed parental involvement in depth.
Given this framework EPA was honoured to be part of the closing panel and
reflect on the key messages and recommendations coming from workshops of experts,
together with representatives of ESHA, ETUCE, OBESSU,
EYF and also a high level
representative of the European Commission. The importance of the event was very
clear from the fact that is was opened jointly by Commissioner Tibor Navracsics
and the Luxembourgish Minister of Education, Claude Meisch.
The
conference started with the official greetings emphasising the importance of
ESL prevention in EU policy. The outcomes of the former Thematic Working Group
on ESL Prevention, former EPA President Johannes Theiner was a member of, was
shown in a 10-minute video, including ESL statistics and personal messages on
the issue from all group members.
The formal
opening was followed by keynote presentations. The first speaker, Professor Francois
Dubet (link in French), French sociologist gave a very intriguing
presentation on why early school leaving became an issue that helped everybody
to shift perspectives by highlighting some interesting facts, like that migrant
workers are often seeked by employers for their lack of qualifications.
He mentioned that he finds the ‘religious belief in schools’ and the ‘ultimate
good of qualifications’ a biasing factor. It is a problem that the lack of
qualifications became a stigma all over the EU, having a qualification is considered a sign of
normality. It resulted in a school inflation caused by good intentions. Society
thinks that schools are there to offer equal opportunities and failure is wrongly
considered to the be students’ fault, resulting in the loss of self-esteem and
devaluation. In his view a minimum of one third of all student are to be
considered drop-outs, the ones not paying attention at school. This most often
results in either leaving and not taking part at all, or aggression and
physical violence against the school. He also called the attention of the
audience to the very important fact that we see a distorted picture of ESL as
those dropping out at third level (university or post-secondary) are not part
of the review. He also talked about the motivation crisis that can be
experienced at schools, namely that the motivation in teachers and middle class
families are not successfully transferred to low SES families, thus they often have
no push even to get up in the morning. He used the notion of a mirage for the
usefulness of education that appears for children when pushed from primary to
secondary and then on to tertiary education. He shares our concerns for the
contents of curricula mentioning that today information is outside of schools,
real life is also outside of schools, so many students feel no point in attending.
It means that for a future society, school motivation has to change
immediately. He compared today’s schools to churches saying that we similarly
need them, but most people do not believe in them anymore. He also underlined
the importance of society in helping its members to find their place, today
there is too much belief in the role of the individual. He finished his presentation
by saying that we should think about how we could help people instead of
paralysing them by their not fitting the system.
Erna
Nairz-Wirth from the University of Vienna presented the outcomes of a longitudinal
study done with students at risk of ESL. The full report is available in German
here.
In her presentation she talked about the bad consequences of dropping out,
namely disorientation, stigmatisation, loss of the sense of time, unemployment,
social, cultural and economic exclusion, psychological strain and escapism.
When presenting the possible preventive measure with regards to the different functions
of schooling (qualification, integration and selection/allocation), she
presented parental involvement and an important integration factor.
Before the
symposium participants broke up to six workshops, Sophie Beernaerts, Head of Unit
School and Educators, Multilingualism at DG EAC outlined the framework of the
Commissions activities in the field of ESL
prevention. The new Thematic Working Group was set up to elaborate on
schools and stakeholders role in ESL prevention without involving the relevant
groups upon the wish of governments. The Commission’s civil servants have tried
to push for a way of involving stakeholders in the process in an alternative
way, but it has not worked out yet.
 |
| Sophie Beernaerts (DG EAC), Odile Cordelier (ETUCE), Eszter Salamon (EPA) and Chris Harrison (ESHA) |
The symposium
then broke up to continue the discussion in six working groups on the topics of
national ESL strategies, diversity, studies on ESL with different perspectives,
promoting smooth educational pathways, NEETs, and parental involvement
and community participation. I was invited to participate at the last one for
obvious reasons. Pedro Cunha, representing the Portuguese Ministry of Education
started his short presentation with calling everybody’s attention to the fact
that parents are the primary educators of their children (EPA’s core message)
and urged for s shift from seeing school as a service to seeing it as a
resource. He emphasised the importance working with and not for parents and
treating them as equals. Substantial reference was made to the Includ-ED project lead by Ramón Flecha.
Four more short presentations were followed by a lively discussion on the role,
intention and motivation of parents, the role of local communities, motivation
of students, homework, parental training, early intervention, professionalization
and the need for individual support resulting in 10 key messages in the fields
of prevention, intervention and compensation. The local presentation by Gilbert Pregno
concluded in a message on the importance of investing in parenthood.
The panel
discussion at the end showed that different stakeholders have visions on the
topic complementing each other. The panel itself showed how much stakeholders
can help each other in their respective roles in education by good cooperation.
Participants had the opportunity to visit the emblematic village of Schengen.
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