Giving a New Impetus to Citizenship Education - Statement by the EP LLL Interest Group

“The potential role of education and lifelong learning in safeguarding EU fundamental values” was the topic of the second meeting of the Interest Group on Lifelong Learning that took place in Brussels on 22nd of September 2015, in the framework of its 2015-6 focus “Inclusive education for inclusive societies”. It was held on the day of the 10th Anniversary General Assembly of EUCIS-LLL and thus attended by a high number of EUCIS-LLL members, including EPA.

New EU priorities set in education and training

A draft joint report of the European Council and the Commission sets new priorities for European cooperation in education and training as part of the strategy for education and training (ET 2020). The Council is expected to adopt the report by the end of the year.

EUCIS-LLL has published a statement welcoming that there is more emphasis on inclusion and citizenship than before, but also calls the attention to the need for supporting cross-sectoral partnerships.

#WeApologise - Open Letter by the Social Platform and NGOs

An open letter to people fleeing war, persecution and poverty

As Europeans, #WeApologise on behalf of our national and European leaders for their inexcusable lack of coordinated humanitarian aid to the situation you and thousands of others are in while crossing our borders to escape war, persecution and poverty.

We understand that making this journey was not an easy decision for you and may have involved putting the lives of your loved ones at risk, or worse. We will continue to urge our decision-makers to provide safe and regular channels to the EU, so that your wellbeing does not rest in the hands of people smugglers.

Civil society organisations and thousands of people across the EU are taking a stand despite many governments’ inaction by opening their homes, sharing their food and donating their clothes. We will keep pressuring our politicians to fulfil their humanitarian obligation to ensure the provision of such services rather than leaving it up to individuals or organisations to provide them without support.

The decision you made that led you here to Europe required a lot of courage. We implore our leaders to demonstrate the same courage by coming together to find a pan-European response that respects each individual’s human rights regardless of their status

While several of our leaders seem to have forgotten the EU’s core values of solidarity and human rights, we have not. The EU has the capacity to welcome you with open arms, and the unwillingness to do so is an embarrassment to us. We acknowledge your right to seek refuge in safer regions and to be treated with dignity. We also recognise the contribution that you can make and we will fight to give you this opportunity.

In solidarity,

Signatures:

ERNAPE Arctic – Researchers met in Tromsø, Norway to explore parental involvement in education

On 26-28^th August we had the opportunity to escape the extreme heat of most of Europe and go to sunny but cool Northern Norway for the 10^th ERNAPE Conference on schools, parents and communities. ERNAPE, the European Research Network about Parents in Education despite its name gathers education researchers from not only Europe, but also the USA, Canada and the Far East. EPA has been associated with ERNAPE ever since its establishment and we always are represented at their bi-annual conferences. This time EPA had the opportunity to also present research results, the preliminary outcomes of our Europe-wide survey on parental involvement that will be presented in full at the EPA 30 Jubilee Conference in November. Besides the interesting presentations with special focus on innovation, the most important development since 2 years ago was the highlighted issue of child participation and child agency alongside parental involvement.

You can find detailed information on the conference and also the abstracts of all presentations on the conference website. From an EPA perspective it was relatively strange that a large majority of presenters were indicating that schools aiming at reaching the unique potential of each child with a necessary individual approach have a disadvantageous approach, and as opposed to European policies encouraging this, although acknowledging that is was an approach requiring more funding and more teacher training, they were actually blaming states for dismantling the generalised approach as a result of neo-liberal policy instead of the welfare state approach. It was a strange development especially since the previous ERNAPE event 2 years ago was dealing with equitable and thus necessarily individualised education.