EU Education, Training and Youth Programmes after 2006.

A Draft NIACE Response to the European Commissions Public Consultation Document
"The Future Development of the EU Education, Training and Youth Programmes after 2006."

In addition to the existing priorities, future programmes should address issues not fully recognised in the current actions. These include:

The ageing of Europe’s population.

Older people will increasingly be called upon to be economically, socially and politically active for longer periods of their lives. Education and training systems and providers, including those involved in formal and non-formal learning, will need to adapt and develop a lifetime perspective to enable people of all ages to continue to learn new skills and knowledge; to develop new approaches to attract and be successful with older people.

The increase in mobility and migration into Europe of people from third countries.

An increasing number of migrants and refugees are moving into the EU countries. For some this is a permanent move. Others will at some stage return to their home countries. This is presenting a challenge to education and training systems in all European countries.

New migrants have the potential to make a significant contribution to the economic development and social cohesion of Europe but currently face many barriers that could be addressed by education and training systems.

Issues that could be progressed include the recognition of qualifications, the development of skills, language learning, and orientation to new cultures.

The ‘host’ community in many parts of Europe could also be supported by education and training provision that includes an appreciation of diversity and combats racism and xenophobia. Inter-cultural learning should have a wider focus than at present.

Supporting the development of education and training in an enlarging EU.

By 2006 the EU will have 10 new members and a further group of countries will be preparing to join at a later stage.

The EU’s Education and Training Programmes should provide targeted support for the development of education and training systems for the next round of enlargement. This should include the development of quality in standards of provision and qualification systems and the development of methods to increase the participation rate of young people and adults.

The Lisbon Summit’s goal for economic growth, more and better jobs and social cohesion gives a crucial role to Employers and Trade Unions. In addition new developments in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS) illustrates the desire to encourage the Social Partners to be more active in sustainable economic and social development, including education and training, that is not simply related to immediate business needs. The new programmes could provide greater opportunities for the participation of Social Partners in developing the learning dimension of CRS.

The broad types of action covered by the Leonardo, Socrates and Youth programmes should be continued, but with increased opportunities for actions covering the issues raised above, i.e:

Currently there is little synergy between the EU’s Education and Training Programmes, other EU initiatives such as ESF (which also makes resources available for education and training) and Member States’ own national, regional and local actions. Joined up thinking at all levels (the Commission itself, the different DGs involved, National and Regional Governments etc.) is required.

This would need to be communicated and made to work at local levels as well as at ministerial, departmental and commission level. Consideration could be given to the drawing up of regional information and dissemination strategies that would focus on the education and training needs of regions and provide comprehensive information about the different programmes, actions and initiatives and the contribution they could make to meeting these needs.

Implementing such a strategy could also provide an opportunity to identify and disseminate good practice including that developed in the region and elsewhere in Europe.

Good practice needs to be identified and a system is required to collect, assess, record and disseminate the considerable wealth of experience gained from projects, research, partnerships, innovations, systems and methods that exist in Europe, which have been funded in different ways and undertaken by different organisations. Even among formal providers such as universities and colleges the dissemination systems need improving. However, among the non-formal providers such as NGO, where innovation is a way of life, since they are always testing new approaches to engage with non-traditional learners, dissemination opportunities are even more limited.

The new generation of programmes should dedicate more resources and allow for the adoption of a more proactive approach to the development of means of identifying good practice and a dissemination strategy.

Mainstreaming will then be a viable goal, which can be pursued by progressive actions (e.g. lessons learnt by innovative Leonardo projects could be mainstreamed through Action 3 of ESF); by informing the Commission, the Council, the Parliament, the Committee of the Regions, ECOSOC etc., of successful practice. Good practice could also be disseminated through the regional information strategies described in A3 above.

The transparency and equivalence of qualifications in academic and vocational fields is now increasingly important as a way of making the mobility of European citizens a reality. However in the next period it is important that third countries are included in this process since mobility of people is a global phenomenon.

In particular the growth of migrants from third countries, many of whom have qualifications that are not recognised in the EU, is resulting in the waste of talent and skills. Consideration should be given to providing incentives through the programmes to involve third countries in the Bologna and Bruges processes.

The EU should both promote intra-Europe links and develop them with the rest of the world. The current programmes have been successful in enabling thousands of learners, teachers and organisations to gain experience of other European environments. There is still a need and desire for many more Europeans to have this experience. However there should also be a consideration of the needs of third countries to benefit from EU links and an assessment of the needs of the EU to benefit from learning from other countries. The needs of third countries for education and training development, where the EU has expertise, may be in specific thematic fields such as women’s education, civil society and capacity building, public health education, human rights and democratic participation and particular vocational areas. The needs of the EU to learn from other countries may be in the fields of inter-cultural education, research and development and scientific and IT areas.

Yes the separate programmes should be maintained, bearing in mind there will be new candidate countries after the 2004 enlargement. However there will be instances when third country organisations wish to join projects and networks set up under the EU, EEA and candidate country programmes. Some allowance should be made for such developments when they would result in stronger and more innovative partnerships. Third countries should be eligible for inclusion in targeted programmes and initiatives addressing issues included in the areas mentioned in B 1and 2 above. The resources of some third countries, particularly those from developing countries, are very limited and this should be recognised when developing programme opportunities and budgets to include them.

The current programmes are now known and valued. There is some merit in maintaining their names and separate natures. However it is not always clear which programme or action is the most relevant one for particular projects or groups of beneficiaries..

For example a project designed for adults which covers vocational and non-vocational learning may be supported by Leonardo or Grundtvig, or it may be passed between the two, causing delay and missed application closing dates. It would be appropriate to design information material and events for potential applicants which are more user friendly and less compartmentalised to enable a wider awareness of the range of opportunities provided by the programmes.

The Leonardo Programme should be improved so that it is not dominated by an emphasis on young people undertaking initial training. As pointed out in A 1 above, adults and older people increasingly need to update their skills and change their working and living patterns to include lifelong learning.

Consideration needs to be given to how information about the programmes can be provided in order to extend the numbers and range of organisations involved. Currently the separate programmes and actions are handled by different administrative bodies who do not usually co-ordinate their activities to meet the needs of potential and real applicants. A more holistic approach is required on the ground. This could involve the targeting of particular types of organisations such as NGOs who may be working with different beneficiaries including young people, older people, migrants, disabled people, women, the unemployed etc., and providing them with the advice necessary to make an application for the relevant actions, to find transnational partners and set up administrative systems etc. It could involve targeting organisations that work with the same group of beneficiaries and providing them with information about the appropriate actions or programms. It is important that the needs of the potential applicants and their beneficiaries dictate the administrative systems and not the other way round.

The advantages of this two fold system should be flexibility at national level and the opportunity for the Commission to identify and monitor priorities at the European level. The disadvantages are that the centralised process is very long and more complicated and this can cause potential applicants to lower their aspirations, modify their proposals and opt for the simpler decentralised route. An example from Grundtvig is that applicants chose to apply for Grundtvig 2 rather than 1 because it is less time consuming and complicated. The process could be improved if: -

Yes, many potential applicants are excluded because they are not aware of the opportunities, have difficulty in finding match funding or find the application process too complex. These are often small NGOs who have the ability to take part, have good ideas to test, work with priority groups and are keen to work with transnational partners but cannot overcome the financial and administrative barriers. It may be possible to ring fence some of the programme’s budget and provide funding for a higher percentage of the costs for use by small NGOs. Dissemination of the opportunities and administrative and monitoring support could be provided by a larger experienced NGO in each eligible country, to enable smaller organisations to participate.

The Social Partners are also under-represented and it may be necessary to develop a new action within one of the programmes specifically designed to involve them. Some ideas on this point are described in A 1 and 2 above.

The policy challenges need to be kept under review. The challenges presented by the EU’s developing employment strategy, the social inclusion NAPs, the various developments in the open method of co-ordination, the mid-term reviews etc should all influence the regular review of the priorities established in each year’s call for proposals. It is also necessary to consider how more of the stakeholders could be brought into the consultative, monitoring and dissemination processes. Providers of non-formal and informal opportunities, particularly NGOs, should be included in the consultative processes on a regular and continuing basis to enable them to advise on how the programmes can meet the needs of wider groups of EU residents and to help mainstream good practice developed through the programmes.

The best features.

The worst features.

A greater emphasis upon mainstreaming would have been welcome. Consideration should be given at commission and member state levels on how to make the programmes and the work undertaken more visible to national governments and other bodies responsible for education and training systems.

Further planning is necessary to make the programmes more user-friendly and a regional information and dissemination strategy has been suggested in the A 3 above, which could contribute to the accessibility and effectiveness of the programmes.

The joint action element is welcome but its scope and purpose needs to be more clearly defined and communicated.

Although the Social Partners are among the organisations eligible to take part, no specific effort has been made to encourage their involvement. Further targeted approaches need to be made to invite their participation.

The programmes are open to a wide range of applicants for a wide range of initiatives. However the budget is insufficient to meet needs and aspirations. This has resulted in expectations being falsely raised and proposals rejected because of lack of resources rather than lack of good applications. Consideration should be given to the production of more realistic invitations to submit proposals or, more positively, to moves to increase the available budget.

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