Playful learning rocks – Let’s enter PlayFutures together

21st century skills

This year’s LEGO Idea Conference highlighted the most important issues around quality education by revisiting two world famous oldies: Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven and Give P’s a Chance (sic!) by John Lennon. While the former relates to PISA results and equitable education systems, the latter refer to the 4 P’s of a quality learning experience (projects, passion, play and peers). The event was also the opportunity to launch the new PlayFutures network aiming at creating a world that values playful learning, and EPA is a partner in. The conference has come up with a ‘simple’ recipe for education reform: putting children in the centre of change and making them feel it is good for them.

Learning Participation - new position paper published by Lifelong Learning Platform

The Lifelong Learning Platform (former EUCIS-LLL) has published a brand new position paper on learning participation.  The paper covers a large number of topics for improving quality, access and outreach. EPA contributed to the position paper substantially as it is a hot topic for parents in Europe.

The paper starts by urging the acknowledgement of learner diversity and the importance of having a well-being focus, covering individualised approaches to teaching as well as learning environments and curriculum design. Increasing collaboration as a tool for increasing attainment is also elaborated on. The position paper revisits the important topics of transversal skills and digital literacy and urges the promotion of successful outreach strategies to raise awareness of participation in all stages of lifelong learning.

As the platform shares the holistic approach to education with EPA, details are also dealt with this approach. A comprehensive tackling of learning participation needs a holistic view including all learners, all educators (parents among them), and a change in the role of educational institutions.

New EU policy recommendations on transforming schools focus on parental involvement and child participation

On 7-8 March a conference in Brussels discussed the results of the ET2020 Working Group on Schools Policy – an expert group of policymakers and stakeholders from more than 30 European countries. The Group’s work over the last two years had focused on identifying successful policy approaches to reducing early school leaving and to raising the quality of Initial Teacher Education. The set of new policy recommendations focus very much on parental involvement and child participation, as well as preparing professionals for this. EPA was represented by Eszter Salamon, President, who was invited to participate at the closing plenary round table discussion, together with representatives of other stakeholder groups, of the event.

Parents concerns about the Skill Agenda

On 14^th March the European Commission is holding a consultation with representatives of civil society. There has been a background paper issued on the Skills Agenda that will be discussed at the meeting. As those organisations that are not Brussels based are not financially supported by the Commission to participate at the meeting, the European Parents’ Association (EPA) has compiled a position paper instead to express our concerns. We keep demanding that there must be an obligation for EU institutions as well as national governments and other decision makers to involve those most directly concerned, namely children, young people and their parents when preparing national skills strategies, action plans, and last but not least in the activities connected to the European Semester and in its annual review.

Our greatest concern is that the holistic approach to education and the network of education institutions is missing, thus it does not tackle the fact that it is schools (primary, secondary and VET) that are the cheapest and most hands on places to support the skills development for local communities, but only if education segments cooperate and manage to change the face of schools, which means to open them up to all locals as community learning spaces. Successful projects all over Europe show that this is the right approach, but it need a very strong collaboration and an even stronger political will to rejuvenate systems that have been in place for 150-200 years. As there has been a huge emphasis on higher education in EU policies, we applaud to the approach that highlights vocational education and adult education as at least equally important policy areas. Parents have been concerned that pushing higher education attainment instead of giving equal support and promotion to other forms of tertiary education may not be the real solution for youth unemployment.

Family matters in financial education

Money management is one of the many crucial life lessons that parents must pass on to their children. As Wim Mijs, Chief Executive of the European Banking Federation, said last year, no one can replace the parents as the main guide for children learning how to deal with money. With this in mind, let’s assume the important role of families in teaching a skill that will be vital at all stages of life.

Parents’ contribution to the European public consultation on ‘challenges of work-life balance’

The European Commission launched a public consultation on a roadmap on ‘possible action to address the challenges of work-life balance faced by working parents and caregivers’. The roadmap openly declares that “the main reason behind the initiative is to address the low participation of women in the labour market by modernising and adapting the current EU legal and policy framework to today's labour market”. On behalf of European parents, EPA as a registered lobby organisation contributed to the public consultation emphasising that issues of reconciliation parents are facing are much broader than measures pushing women to participate at the labour market. First of all, it is important for us to demand the use of another phrase ‘work-life balance’ as it suggests that work is not part of life while it is.

BETT Conference in London - 20-23 January 2016

The BETT 2016 conference 20-23.January 2016 at the ExCel Centre in London was four days of insight and exploration into the world of education technology. It is the biggest event in the world on the topic of digital technology and education where EPA was represented by Vice President Christian Hellevang.