Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-05-Speech-4-030"
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"en.20020905.2.4-030"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, since the Lisbon Summit, education and training have become a more and more important part of EU strategy. Commissioner Reding has appropriately described the situation regarding education and training as undergoing a quiet revolution. This description is also true in a negative sense. The European Parliament and its Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport have barely played any part in setting targets for education and training. Furthermore, the open coordination method that has been adopted in the education sector has caused the main focus of the debate to move away from the forum of democratically elected bodies to one made up of civil servants. Now that Kathleen Van Brempt has produced her excellent report, we have a good opportunity to talk about lifelong learning here in plenary.
An economy built on people’s knowledge and skills will be more successful the more widely human resources are used. Ensuring that all our citizens keep up with developments as best they can is not only an ethically sustainable policy but also one that is wise and practical. Lifelong learning is becoming increasingly important with regard to citizens’ participation, boosting employment and regeneration of the workforce. It would help employment and increase motivation if there were a clearer link between lifelong learning and qualifications based on the needs of industry. Nevertheless, I want to stress the importance of the point made in the Committee on Culture’s report that lifelong learning is not merely a social necessity. It must also be a social right for everyone, irrespective of their age, sex or social background.
Equality of education is, for many reasons, very difficult to bring about. However, it is precisely education that is the path to equality. For that reason I wish to emphasise the need for setting special targets so that the provision of lifelong learning can be made to include people who failed to finish their secondary education, are untrained, have special needs and learning difficulties, or who are socially underprivileged. We should remember that a quality secondary education creates a basis for lifelong learning. It is not very realistic, for example, to consider demanding IT skills if a person’s literacy and numeracy skills are inadequate.
Although it is the responsibility of Member States to organise education, we need practical European targets and measures. The Commission communication is a step in the right direction. We also have to try to achieve consensus on what the basic skills mentioned at Lisbon – knowledge of information and communication technologies, foreign languages, science, entrepreneurship and social skills – actually consist of. It is easier to achieve aims if we know what we are aiming at."@en1
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