Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-14-Speech-1-084"
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Mr President, much has been said, and indeed, much has been well said. I should have preferred to see a number of ministers sitting here listening to what Parliament had to say on subjects such as the European surplus, or observing the principle of subsidiarity while creating a European policy. I believe it is very important that ministers should hear with their own ears what the elected representatives of the people have to say.
I should like to draw your attention, ladies and gentlemen, to the studies made of the quality of primary and secondary education. This is a revolution! Could you have imagined, in 1995, that ministers would ever have agreed to let strangers come and check up on their quality levels in education? Never! Yet this is now being done
The system is still not perfect, but comparisons make it possible for ministers to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and they are making efforts to correct any shortcomings.
As regards financial provisions, the White Paper does not contain any. In spite of this, we have drawn up an impressive number of pilot projects, which we have funded and which have often provided the basis for reforms on the ground. In recent years the Commission has wanted to play, and has indeed played, the role of an incubator of ideas, a driving force. In this respect I am thinking of the pilot projects on second-chance schools or the European Voluntary Service.
As far as second-chance schools are concerned, I had my doubts. I went and had a look at them and I was most pleasantly surprised. They are not intended to replace national education, but rather to solve social problems, and the results are excellent. The staff is very committed, they believe in what they are doing, and what they are doing is rescuing young people. It really is extraordinary. The project was recently the subject of an assessment, Mr Perry, which will shortly be referred to Parliament. This assessment confirms the great success of the pilot project and the thirteen schools. For instance, the index measuring the failure rate is only 6%, whereas in institutions or similar projects the failure rate is between 30 and 50%. So you can really see that progress has been made. In any case, I should like to see this system, which has proved its worth, being introduced in more Member States.
The objectives set out in the White Paper were incorporated into the Luxembourg Process, the Cardiff Process and the Social Agenda. As you know, from now on education ministers will be taking part in debates on social issues, on the same footing as ministers for social affairs and ECOFIN. This represents an enormous amount of progress. It has not had any noticeable effect yet, but the main thing is to be present and to make a contribution. The views of the education ministers have been expressed in the demands they have addressed to the European Council.
So, ladies and gentlemen, it is up to us to define the new priorities, to launch multi-annual programmes, to open up new debates, and to issue new challenges. I believe that we are on the right track, and we have every reason to be positive and optimistic.
However, this does not mean that we can assume that we have achieved everything already. That is far from being the case. Nevertheless, the machine is in motion and progress has been made. In 1995, all we had were grand ideas, but no practical action on the ground. Now, we are making progress.
I should just like to say a word or two about Bologna. At the first Education Council, which I attended, I found that Bologna was only the subject of an intergovernmental procedure. I made sure that it was incorporated into the Community context by associating the Commission with the process, on a joint basis with the ministerial troika.
Under the Swedish Presidency, I recognise that the time has come for fresh progress, and I am convinced that the ministerial conference in Prague will enable us to make that progress. I have already been in contact with the Belgian Presidency, because here too there has been some follow-up action, with a view to continuing in this direction. Now we are waiting for the Prague ministerial conference, and then the Belgian Presidency will take over again.
Ladies and gentlemen, I can well imagine that the European Parliament will be preparing an own-initiative report, for example after the Prague conference. It is not always necessary to wait for the Commission to draw up a report before you act. Parliament has the right to take its own initiatives. Use that power, so that we can hear your voice.
With regard to the
Learning reports by Mr Alavanos and Mr Mauro, I should like to thank Parliament, its rapporteurs and its committees, many of whom were involved, for the support that they have given me on this issue right from the beginning. Mr Alavanos and Mr Mauro have done a remarkable job, Mr Alavanos earlier, and now Mr Mauro. This is of vital importance, because here too this process helped us considerably at crucial moments, in defining the concept of
Learning immediately after the Lisbon Summit, and in formulating the
Learning action plan, immediately after the last European Council.
First of all I should like to thank Mr Perry for his report on the White Paper. The White Paper dates from 1995. That is a long time ago. The revolution, if there was one, Mr Perry, happened last year, over the past twelve to fifteen months, in other words, since Lisbon. Since 1995, the ideas put forward, mainly by the European Parliament – and here I agree with Mrs Pack that the initiator of all this policy was undoubtedly the European Parliament – have been put into practice, at least in part.
I should like to respond to the three fundamental messages not only expressed by the rapporteurs but also discussed by the Members of this House.
The first is the principle of access for everyone. You know that immediately after the Lisbon Summit the
Learning plan gave rise to various initiatives in some Member States, aimed at installing computers in the classroom.
However, a computer in the classroom is not an end in itself. A computer is only a machine, a tool. It has to be possible to use that computer, and the fact that it exists does not mean that it is being used. In my opinion, therefore, we must never separate the tool from the person who is using it. In short, yes we must equip schools, but we must do more than that. We must equip schools but we must also have electronic communication centres in our local authority areas, because it is not only those who go to school who have to participate in the information society. There are also those who have left school.
Exchanging scientific information, enhancing the services provided by libraries, creating an accessible European educational network and specific services, these are all essential measures to combat social exclusion. Yet social exclusion will continue to exist if, in order to lend more weight to the statistics, we merely install computers without providing teachers with appropriate training. I have paid careful attention to the report on the position of women and the special training that they will need, in view of their quite different approach to the new technologies. I believe that we need to take this into consideration.
We must also train our teachers. We have discussed this issue a great deal in recent weeks. Teachers are the key to the success of
Learning. Yet most of them are not equipped to use computers, and to ensure that those computers, and this software, this content, constitute an aid to learning. It is essential to convince them that they can teach differently by using new technologies. On this subject I should like to quote a phrase used by Mr Rocard, the draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, when he reiterated the argument that a radical reorganisation of education is called for in terms of physical space, time and substance.
We are faced with a new world, and there are not many of us who realise what that means. I would like to say here and now that this new world will happen not only as a result of participation by the public services but also as a result of the world of industry becoming more responsible. This is why, last week, I organised the first
Learning summit in Brussels, in partnership with both the public and the private sectors. That summit was wonderful, because it provided a platform for some amazing exchanges, and at the same time it demonstrated how the private sector is becoming more responsible, the businesses, and the know-how that exists in this area. The ideal situation, of course, would be one in which there was symbiosis between the two. Though policy decisions have to be taken by those who are responsible for policy-making, the implementation of those decisions could well be the result of interaction between the knowledge of the private sector and the educational knowledge of the public sector. These two types of knowledge, working together, could be highly effective. The idea has been suggested, and I hope that it will be followed by specific projects in this field.
This brings me to another subject. Yes, Europe is showing the way, but these theories are not put into practice in some ivory tower in Brussels. They are put into practice in our regions, our towns and our villages. The method used should be the ‘bottom-up’ method. In other words, though policy decisions have to be taken somewhere, they have to be implemented, not from the top downwards, but rather at grass-roots level. Any contribution towards getting specific local projects off the ground will be welcome.
So you see, ladies and gentlemen, we are standing on the threshold of a great adventure. Things are moving on all sides, though admittedly not always in the right direction, but then we are learning lessons as well. People sometimes ask me for something more specific, but there is already much that is specific at ground level, and this has been the case not only during the past year or so. Specific projects implemented under our Socrates and Leonardo programmes have generated many of the features that we are now finding in our education systems. Basically, these were programmes which you wanted, for which you, together with the Commission, sought and obtained serious funding, and which, despite all the administrative problems which you regularly bring to my attention, are positive elements.
So, dear colleagues, we have had the right idea for many years now. We are travelling together in the right direction. We are taking giant steps forward, much more rapidly than anyone could have imagined two or three years ago. There are a few small problems here and there. Let us tackle them together, but tackle them in a spirit of optimism, because things really are improving.
On the recognition of educational qualifications, I am well aware that much remains to be done, but the system of credits within universities has started to work.
As far as mobility is concerned, I know that in practice we have not made much progress yet, but a decision on mobility was taken at the Nice Summit. We now have something definite to go on, which is much better than simply the grand ideas that we could discuss five, six or seven years ago.
As for language proficiency, things are moving in the Member States, thanks, amongst other things, to the European Year of Languages 2001, as a result of which everyone is discussing the subject, local authorities, parents, and teachers themselves. There is a change taking place beneath the surface. We can therefore expect to see this change making itself felt in the everyday practice in our schools.
With regard to investment in education, this is an area in which I would let subsidiarity prevail, and I share the regrets of those Members who say that fine words should be followed up with budgetary resources. Yet there is no doubt that either most of the ideas proposed in 1995 are now being put into practice, or else we now have the tools with which to push them forward. So I am not as pessimistic as some Members of Parliament on this point, because I have seen, and I have felt, that the situation has been developing since the Lisbon Summit. A fundamental change is taking place. Of course, it is too slow, but at least things are moving, and that in itself is a major step in the right direction.
On the subject of lifelong learning, 1996 certainly represented one of the first steps forward in this area. I presented my memorandum on what Mrs Maes calls ‘learning as you live’. It would be marvellous to be able to implement this idea, but it is not the Commission who will be putting lifelong learning into practice in the Member States and in the regions. The Commission can encourage, it can push, it can come up with ideas, but when it comes to implementation on the ground, that is up to the Ministers for Education, not to mention the trades unions and the social partners. A whole new system of informal training schemes will have to be created in most Member States. Well, I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that in ten years’ time we shall still be talking about lifelong learning, and we shall probably have taken a few small steps forward, but we shall not have succeeded in finding a definitive solution to the problem.
As for information technologies, I shall come back to this subject in detail later, but here too an enormous amount has happened, from the highlighting of the problem to the recognition that practical action was needed. Look at the Netdays Europe initiative, look at the E-schools. Of course, at the moment there are only a thousand of them. There really ought to be five thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand. I am well aware of this. These thousand schools, however, represent experience on the ground. I should like to thank not only the European Parliament, which is pushing things forward, but also all those people who are working ‘at the coalface’, with a great deal of idealism, often alone, with very meagre resources, putting their hearts into it because they believe in progress. They are remarkable people, and I think we should say thank you to all those who, on the ground, are helping to put our ideas into practice. The
Learning action plan is also helping to change things. Lastly, we are now in the middle of European Year of Languages 2001. I have already said this, but I will repeat it. We must learn the languages of our neighbours as well as our own mother tongue. Those who are doing nothing about it are beginning to have a guilty conscience. That, at least, is a start. We must continue to nurture that guilty conscience.
Some Members have mentioned subsidiarity. As far as I am concerned, the interpretation of subsidiarity is very clear. I respect it, but I want to create a European added value, networking, the exchange of information, and the dissemination of good practice."@en1
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