Work-family life reconciliation issues for parents in Europe

One of the main EPA policy documents highlighting the issues European parents are facing is the Leave of Absence manifesto, dating back to 2009. In this document there are two areas covered in relation to reconciling work and family life, namely

• on the one hand demanding legal structures and resources guaranteeing that parents can fulfil their parental duties even if they fall to regular working hours,
• on the other hand demanding for skills and competences learnt during parenting to be acknowledged and recognised for employability.

School Education Gateway - a new tool to learn about European education policies

European-level initiatives for schools can too easily remain unknown, inaccessible or uninteresting for teachers and other education professionals. A new website, the School Education Gateway, shall provide clear information on education initiatives across Europe. The website is aimed primarily at teachers and school staff, as well as education sector experts and organisations.

Training material on Investing in Children available online

The European Institute of Public Administration has recently made available some material delivered during recent training sessions organised by the European Commission . The training was designed for national administrators who are currently working on developing implementation strategies for theRecommendation 'Investing in children - breaking the cycle of disadvantage'. This builds on the training seminars held throughout Europe over the past months, notably in Athens in May 2014, and in Italy in March 2014.

European Semester Country Reports published by the European Commission

On 26 February 2015, the European Commission published a series of country-specific documents as the next step in the 2015 European Semester cycle. As three headline targets concern children and young people, the reports explore the situation in the field of early school leaving, participation in tertiary education, youth unemployment and child poverty country-by-country.

Listen to the Voice of Children - Why do we have to change education?

On 27 February EPA's president participated at the Voice of Children – from communication to self-expression - Conference organised by Butterflywise and the Alliance forChildhood. While we had the opportunity to learn a lot about the way Butterflywise’s education system works, we could also learn a lot from the introductory speech of Christopher Clouder on how much we can learn from our children and how important play and playfulness are for their education. Noemi Paymal, a world-known anthropologist presented her Pedagooogia 3000 initiative and emphasised the need to change schools nearly fully to meet the needs and potential of the new generations that is proven to be a next phase in the evolution of mankind.

Report on the January session of the INGO Conference

At the session of 26-29 January, the INGOs Conference of the Council of Europe, elected its new board and an expert on gender equality. The Conference held a debate and adopted a resolution following the terrorist attacks in Paris. The Conference organized a visit of a group of Ukrainian NGOs to discuss the implementation of the strategic priorities for the promotion of civil participation in decision making in Ukraine and adopted a resolution on "civil society, peace and democracy in Ukraine. The Conference welcomed a delegation of the Ministry of Relations with Parliament and Civil Society of the Kingdom of Morocco for an exchange of views on possible future cooperation.

The importance and challenges of involving parents in the value-based education of children

The European Wergeland Centre is promoting education for democratic citizenship, human rights and intercultural understanding. They have a so-called EWC Statement Series in order to highlight recent and ongoing research activities. They are regularly inviting scholars and other education professionals to publish their views on topics related to their work. The statement are published both online and in a printed booklet each year. Following up to the much applauded keynote and workshop of Zakia Akkouh from EWC at the EPA conference in Bucharest in December 2014, they have invited the president of EPA to write such a statement on the role of parents in citizenship and human rights education as well as intercultural understanding.