Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-05-Speech-3-413"
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"en.20000705.15.3-413"2
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"Mr President, it was late when I made my last speech, it is even later now so I shall be try to be even briefer. But education is important and we must make sure it gets the attention it deserves.
Often education attracts fine words. What it does not always get is the action to match those words. We all know the EU has very limited responsibilities as regards education, but there are some places where the European Union can give added value. Quality evaluation is one of those. When I went into town earlier on this evening I saw young people in the city of Strasbourg looking at leaflets up on a wall. What they were looking at were their baccalaureate results. So we think nothing about evaluating youngsters. What we need to do is evaluate the schools and to make sure that the schools are doing well. Since the schools are preparing young people for an education in the single market of Europe, we must make sure that the schools across Europe are all doing their work to prepare people for the single market those young people are going to work in.
In some parts of the Union – and I am quite willing to cite the United Kingdom – we are not doing as well as we could. There are very many bright youngsters who do very well in the schools, but 20% of young people leave British schools without any qualifications at all. We cannot afford to allow that to continue to happen. There have been estimates that in the next two years we will require half a million extra people in IT jobs. Where are those young people going to come from? We have to make sure that the schools can deliver them and I am quite sure that what is contained in this report is one of the ways that we can help raise the standards in schools. In English we say “two heads are better than one”. I am quite prepared to believe that 15 heads, or 15 sets of data across the Union, will help us achieve better quality in the schools.
I would just say to the Council – and I hope there is somebody from the Council listening to this – I know we can have confidence in the Commissioner, but let us say to the Council that their fine words at Lisbon were great but they should now deliver on them. I am therefore very sorry that the great efforts that the rapporteur made to get full agreement were not actually rewarded. So do not be too surprised if this Parliament backs the rapporteur and tries to push the Council to live up to the fine words they were so ready to utter."@en1
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