Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-321"
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"en.20050907.22.3-321"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to thank the House for giving me the opportunity to present this report. It is an important report in terms of the schools which the European institutions run principally for the children of staff who work in the institutions.
It is quite an undertaking these days. At the moment there are over 19 200 pupils in fourteen European schools in ten locations, including Brussels and Luxembourg. Therefore, we have a responsibility here to make sure that these schools are providing the best education possible, in the best way, making best use of the resources and using the teaching staff and the curriculum in the best possible way. That is what I have sought to look at in my report, and it is important that we consider these issues at this point because these schools were in fact set up about fifty years ago and, although there have been times when they have been looked at, essentially not very much has changed in that time. So we now have an opportunity to look at these schools, the way they are run, their governance, their funding and the curriculum, and make recommendations for improvements.
In my report, I have specifically looked at those areas, that is to say, at finance, governance and government of the schools, at the curriculum and the way that it is taught within the schools.
First of all I would like to raise the question of finance. Mr Bösch is here who in fact did a report a couple of years ago on this subject and I think he will want to talk further on this. However, it is important that we look at the way the schools are funded and make sure that we are using our funds to the very best advantage.
A particular area I would like to highlight is the way that teachers are employed. At the moment, teachers are seconded from Member States to teach in the European schools for a certain period of time after which many of them go back to their own Member States. Given the way the schools are organised, in that in addition to mother-tongue teaching, there is teaching of certain subjects in Community languages, the system as it stands at the moment places an unfair burden on English-speaking countries, which provide proportionately more teachers because there is a demand within the European schools for English teaching. I hope, as a result of this report, that particular issue will be taken on board.
The other thing which is important under the ‘Finance’ heading is the question of fees and the way that the structure of payments works. Children of employees of the European institutions do not have a fee levied on them, which is absolutely right because that is the reason why the schools were set up. However, these days, many school places, not the majority, but very many places in the schools, are filled by children from outside the European institutions. There are a significant number who come from other government-type institutions and from local industry. They are generally paid for by the organisation which sends them. So that does not present too many problems.
But where there are real difficulties is in the remaining pupils, who are chosen by what appears to be a fairly random method and pay a proportion of the fees themselves – their families pay for them. This system has come in for considerable criticism because it is not transparent and very often the fees levied are not sufficient, they are not actually reflecting the market rates.
Turning to the question of governance, I would like to see the administrative boards which govern the schools have more autonomy. In terms of curriculum, the main thing is that we reduce class sizes so that no class within the European schools is more than thirty; at the moment the maximum is thirty-two.
So I commend this report to you and I ask for your support."@en1
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