The European Commission has published a new Eurydice report on the responses to Education 2020 from the EU member states. The report reviews all four key areas relevant to Education 2020 strategy: early school leaving (ESL), higher education, youth employment and vocational education and training (VET) and lifelong learning. The aims of the report are to provide a more cross-case analysis rather than a progress report by individual countries that can instead be found here.
When it comes to higher education, the core benchmark used is the widely stated 40% of age cohort with tertiary education, and the policy ambitions are closely related to the 2011 Modernisation agenda with two main goals being: increased attainment rates and improvement of quality and relevance of higher education. While improvement is reported across the countries, one is still left with a question what that 40% participation rate means in terms of distribution within countries, and why is such a general benchmark useful in itself. Countries reporting growth or decrease can do that for very various reasons, some of which might be minor corrections or have little relevance for higher education policies. While the report also takes into account the equity and access aspects of widening participation, the report also refers to a recent Eurydice report and states that these are rarely a core element in higher education policies (p.37).
Regarding the quality and relevance, the report is primarily concerned with quality assurance systems, performance based funding, closer links to the industry and employability of graduates, following the core focus of the Modernisation agenda. While certain best-practice cases and initiatives related to these topics are highlighted across these topics, there also appears to be great diversity regarding the focus on these issues and the instruments employed, something to be expected considering the diverse higher education landscape in Europe.
Regarding the other four areas, regarding early school leaving, measures to prevent early school leaving are reported in two thirds of the countries, and a large group of countries also has focused on developing policies for disadvantaged pupils. VET sector is considered an important instrument in half of the countries, whereas intervention policies are reported only in a handful of countries. Overall, as the report summarises policy developments, the categorisations of kinds of policies developed is rather broad as one can assume varied national contexts. The actual outcomes and impacts of these policies thus remain to be seen.
When it comes to skills and VET for youth employment, this is an issue that by all accounts should be high in the political agenda, considering the high levels of youth unemployment in Europe. The report mentions the increased focus on the topic since 2011, and identifies a number of different measures are reported related to apprenticeship schemes, improving school-work transition as well as work-based learning opportunities during studies. While focus on skills mismatches is certainly high on the agenda in European policy debates and in the CEDEFOP reviews, only four countries (IE, LV, PL and PT) have indicated that they are developing specific schemes for forecasting and monitoring. The report also highlights national variety amongst the countries that have high levels of unemployment and their attention to the issue in terms of direct policy output.
One of the benchmarks for education is to achieve 15% of the adult population to lifelong learning, following EUs long-standing focus on lifelong learning where the progress since 2000 has been relatively slow. The report indicates that only five member states have succeeded this far in terms of reaching this target. Three of these countries are Nordic countries (DK, FI and SE), in addition to UK and the Netherlands, indicating perhaps also a cultural difference in various European regions. However, it is highlighted that the ongoing development of qualifications frameworks in European countries as well as policies for validation of informal and non-formal learning are important instruments in furthering the lifelong learning goals.
With the qualifications frameworks being an area that still requires significant work, and heightened focus on validation being a rather new development, one can wonder whether this lifelong learning goal really is attainable Europe wide. This is perhaps related to the actual use and relevance of such benchmarks – are they meant to be achieved or do they exist as almost arbitrary numbers that only give an indication of the necessity to focus on a particular policy field. The question also raises from the fact that the period between 2000 to 2010 indicated slow progress in terms of many of the benchmarks at that time.