Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-26-Speech-1-218-000"
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"en.20110926.24.1-218-000"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, at this somewhat late hour the students are, I trust, sleeping, and it will not be long before their teachers are doing the same. We, however, are still up. Drawing as it does on the Commission’s last report on the European Schools’ system, our report aims to improve the European Schools concept, which must be adapted to the new economic requirements and the changes in society.
Finally, Madam President, Commissioner, I wish to repeat my call to the Board of Governors to work on providing alternatives that allow students who are unable to complete the course to find vocational courses. I would not wish to finish this presentation without thanking the Commission, my colleagues, the shadow rapporteurs and rapporteurs, and especially the parents’ associations, who have enabled us to reach a consensus on which to progress this issue. Forgive me for having stolen 45 seconds from you.
This concept must remain a model of inspiration for national school systems, promoting European citizenship and encouraging increased mobility, as well as the learning of the languages of the Member States, the languages of the countries of Europe.
These are the main points of this report: first, it contains a set of policy priorities to improve this educational model in Europe, in particular by establishing an appropriate legal basis for it, in accordance with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The current legal status has reached its limits and requires a radical change to allow the Union to carry out actions to support, coordinate or supplement the work of the Member States, without, of course, superseding their competence, and to adopt legally binding acts to that end pursuant to Articles 2 and 6 of the TFEU.
I believe that Article 165 of the Treaty could be a perfectly appropriate legal basis. The European Schools must set an educational example by basing themselves on the dissemination of European culture, values, integration and languages. It is, therefore, essential for the Member States to cooperate when developing their national syllabuses, drawing on the simple example, which has worked wonderfully well up to now, of the teaching approach used by the European Schools.
The opening of Type II and Type III Schools must be wholeheartedly encouraged. It is in this spirit that the report insists that holders of the European baccalaureate should be able, once and for all, to apply to any university in the EU, with the same rights as nationals of the country in question who hold equivalent qualifications, as it is essential that the baccalaureate is automatically recognised in all of the Union’s Member States.
In this difficult period, I wished to stress the absolute need to rationalise the Schools’ management costs, without calling into question the fundamental principles on which the concept rests, especially mother-tongue teaching by native speakers, in order to maintain the quality of this teaching. Similarly, I believe it is essential to maintain equal and equivalent teaching conditions for the children of all language communities in the European Schools.
It is, therefore, with a concern for fairness that the report highlights, in accordance with Article 4 of the Convention defining the Statute of the European Schools, the plan to see general use of the working languages for teaching all non-fundamental subjects, without, of course, this being detrimental to those whose mother tongue is not one of the working languages.
To ensure good governance of the European Schools, very serious attention must be paid to the lack of seconded staff. This must be compensated for by local recruitment of teachers, whose salaries should be paid by the Schools. The Board of Governors must, therefore, ensure that Member States that do not contribute financially by seconding teachers pay an equivalent financial contribution to the Schools’ budget.
I wished to reaffirm moreover that, in these difficult times in particular, provision for students with special educational needs remains a priority, and I have asked the Board of Governors, in this regard, to ensure that coefficients are applied to this category of student when calculating class sizes in order to ensure their full integration."@en1
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