Rethinking Education strategy of the EU

There is an ongoing debate on the document of the European Commission Rethinking education: investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes. Parents should have a say both on the European level and also by triggering and participating at the national debates initiated by the EC.

The starting point is: "European education and training systems continue to fall short in providing the right skills for employability, and are not working adequately  with business or employers to bring the learning experience closer to the reality of the working environment. These skills mismatches are a growing concern for European industry's competitiveness."



"...the European Commission invites Member States to push forward educational reforms to combat 
youth unemployment and boost skills supply through the following actions:
1. Promote excellence in vocational education and training (VET)

2. Improve the performance of student groups with high risk of early school leaving and low basic skills.

3. Strengthen the provision of transversal skills that increase employability such as entrepreneurial initiative, digital skills and foreign languages.
4. Reduce the number of low-skilled adults.
5. Scale up the use of ICT-supported learning and access to high quality OER.
6. Revise and strengthen the professional profile of all teaching professions.

Implementation of these reforms will not be successful without increasing the efficiency of funding in education.





You can read the full document here: http://ec.europa.eu/education/news/rethinking/com669_en.pdf

OBESSU, a very important partner of EPA has published its reaction to the document stating they welcomed "the acknowledgement by the Commission of education as a crucial solution to the crisis Europe is facing. We believe school students should play a fundamental role in the development of educational policies since they are most affected by those policies. Unfortunately, the Communication fails in recognising education as a human right, answering to the different learners’ needs, and leaving a space for personal development and fulfilment. The Commission’s document, instead, focuses mainly on the idea of education as producer of workforce, responding solely to labour market’s needs. We therefore believe that the communication serves as only one small step of a much more comprehensive strategy and that educational policies at both European and national level should be further developed in partnership with those mainly affected by Education: learners."

We should emphasize that the role of parents, the primary and most impacting educators of their children is just as important. In case of children, the age group under 14-16 youth organisations are not concerned about t it's mainly the role of parents to have their say in this field and it's still important while the children already belong to the youth age group.