EU’s economy depends on better schooling

End-of-term report says EU must do better.

The eurozone’s debt problems have a tendency to grab the attention. This week has been no exception, with European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund officials in Lisbon, talk of debt restructuring in Athens, and the results of  Finland’s election casting doubt over the willingness of ‘prudent’ voters to bail out the ‘profligate’. 

So it would be easy to overlook the progress report on education in the EU published by the Commission yesterday (19 April). Easy, but wrong. For between the lines, this end-of-term report contained some bracing truths about the state of European education. Without improvement, it will be harder to make the advances in competitiveness that are part of the medicine for the eurozone’s economic woes, especially for Portugal, Greece and other southern countries.

The report was delivered by Androulla Vassiliou, the amiable European commissioner for education, culture, multilingualism and youth. Despite her easy manner, Madame Vassiliou is not the most popular teacher in the EU school. Some students think education is not what they come to Brussels for – a subject for home study, not EU school. Even star pupils, such as Germany, have grumbled that the EU curriculum is better limited to home economics and international studies. But such grumbling is misplaced: yesterday’s report shows that even the best-performing pupils cannot afford to be complacent.

To sum up, class EU27 has made some progress, but really needs to pull its socks up if it is to meet the targets agreed at this year’s parent-teacher meeting on the ‘Europe 2020’ study programme. Unfortunately, EU27 has not reached the pass-mark on the education element of the course-work for jobs and growth. This examination will have to be re-taken.

In 2000, the member states set themselves five targets: to reduce the proportion of pupils dropping out of school, to reduce the number leaving with poor reading skills, to increase the percentage completing upper secondary education, as well as the numbers of maths, science and technology graduates and of adults in life-long learning. With the important exception of increasing graduate numbers for maths, science and technology, none of these targets has been achieved.

The response to this failure has been to up both the rhetoric and the targets.

By 2020, fewer than 10% of students should leave school early, the share of under-achieving 15-year-olds in reading, maths and science should fall to less than 15%. Education ministers want to stretch achievement at both ends: at least 95% of children between the age of four and the compulsory school-starting age should be in early-years education; while 40% of people in their early thirties should have degrees and at least 15% of all adults should be involved in life-long learning.

But aspirations are not enough. The Commission’s gentle message is that member states are not delivering on their promises. The targets have more political weight behind them than ever before: the EU’s much-trumpeted economic master plan for growth and jobs, known as Europe 2020, incorporates two of the targets – to lower drop-out rates and increase the number of graduates. Yet Europe 2020, like the ill-fated Lisbon Agenda before it, could prove a source of embarrassment rather than pride. The plans put in place by member states to meet the Europe 2020 targets are “conservative”, the Commission said yesterday, and may not be enough to meet the goals.

The Commission’s report shows up disparities in performance between member states that ought to shame the laggards. For the most part, education policy will remain of necessity a matter for national governments, beyond the EU’s remit. But it is so important, and it has such a strong effect on economic performance, that the EU cannot and should not ignore it. The Commission’s report is a timely reminder: the decisions that national governments make on education will have a far greater effect on Europe’s economic performance than countless decisions taken within the EU to stimulate economic recovery. Unless Europe’s schools and universities do better, the EU will struggle.

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