STUDY GROUP ON EDUCATION AND TRAINING REPORT

ACCOMPLISHING EUROPE THROUGH EDUCATION AND TRAINING

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

If Europe is to remain at the driving edge, economic and political progress must be complemented by offering an 'European vision' to her young people. Education and training efforts must mobilize themselves around this emerging picture.

This task is an urgent one: whilst the European population is stabilizing, and the proportion of young Europeans within the total is continually diminishing, the world's population will almost double in the space of the next generation. Mobilizing education and training effort is also urgent in the interests of those adults with low levels of education and qualifications, and those who must renew their personal competencies on a lifelong basis. Finally, this task is an urgent one in order to facilitate the best adaptation possible to new employment conditions and the development of the learning society.

Positions within the world system are now being defined. These changes correspond to a sentiment of uncertainty, which at times can lead us to think that human understanding of the world is on the retreat. Nevertheless, the Study Group takes the view that technology and international competition present opportunities that can be grasped.

Their different origins notwithstanding, the Study Group members are in agreement that Europe's education and training systems must take three major imperatives into account: (i) the need to strengthen European competitiveness in economic, technological, innovatory scientific and organizational terms; (ii) the need to appreciate the difficulties of the current situation; (iii) the need to respect the basic principles of education, whose aims go far beyond a purely utilitarian perspective.

During the course of a heritage accumulated over the centuries, three fundamental aims of education and training have emerged through a long process of maturation. These are, firstly, the development of personal autonomy; secondly, the stimulation of opportunities for social integration and, thirdly, the improvement of vocational competencies. In consolidating these three fundamental aims and in building upon this heritage, educational and training systems can better respond to the imperatives noted above.

In order to propose a European vision to its young people, Europe must take a step forward in the field of education and training. Whilst many routes are possible in lending content to this vision, the aims to be attained should be commonly shared. The Study Group considers that changes required in education and training systems should envisage four aims, significant progress towards which should be made between now and the year 2000. These aims are: (i) constructing European citizenship through education and training; (ii) reinforcing European competitiveness and preserving employment through education and training; (iii) maintaining social cohesion through education and training; (iv) education and training in the information society. In order to address more specifically the question of implementing these changes, the Study Group turned its attention to the conditions under which education and training systems function and to the actors who are entrusted with this task, in particular schoolteachers and heads of education establishments."Constructing European citizenship through education and training"

European citizenship is above all a humanist concept, founded in the construction of a greater Europe characterized by cultural differences, by different economic conceptions, and by different natural realities but united by the sense of belonging to a common civilization. It is on the basis of a shared democratic culture that this greater Europe will construct itself and in which Europeans will recognize themselves as citizens of Europe. They will not regard themselves as citizens of Europe because they belong to a common culture, or on the basis of a particular dimension of belonging. Rather, they will do so because they will construct themselves as citizens of Europe on the basis of new relations which they will establish between themselves. This is the first element of a European vision to propose to young people.

To become a rallying idea, European citizenship must be real, not merely formal. This implies going beyond principles and rules. Citizenship is a plural concept: (i) it is a normative idea and in this sense is related to the concept of civil society and its moral and ideological defence; (ii) it is a social practice and develops through dynamic process, during which the sense of belonging constructs itself on the basis of differences, of communication with others, of conflicts and negotiated compromises, and of shared images; (iii) it is a relational practice between individuals in their social context at the level of state, local government, and associations.

The education system has a role to play in the promotion of active citizenship. Education can play this role through its formal institutions, but it can also do so through communities or through the mass-media. Under varying names, education for citizenship exists in many Member States. It pursues different aims, takes up varying amounts of curriculum time and addresses itself to different age groups and target groups. If we wish to develop a sense of being citizens of Europe amongst young people, some improvement in this field is therefore necessary.

From this point of view and in considering the path to be followed, the question of gender relations is significant, but equally that of intercultural relations. The history of the long struggle for women's rights is a good example of the effort that is needed in order to learn to relativise seemingly universal values, but without falling into a moral vacuum. It also shows that formal rights, however dearly bought, can be contradicted in practice: numerous forms of implicit discrimination still exist, which are based on apparently flattering differentiation, but which in fact lead to constraints for those individuals at hand, limiting them to circumscribed and highly specified responsibilities. To counter these practices, Europe must promote education and training that aims to destroy all stereotypical images of human beings.

For the purposes of developing a programme of citizenship education the following five essential dimensions have been retained in this report. These are: (i) the recognition of the dignity and centrality of the human person; (ii) social citizenship, social rights and responsibilities, the struggle against social exclusion; (iii) egalitarian citizenship, that is, the rejection of discrimination and prejudice based on gender and ethnicity; understanding the value of equality; (iv) intercultural citizenship: the value of diversity and openness for a plural world; (v) ecological citizenship.

In close liaison with Member States, Europe should take action through education and training to consolidate European citizenship in the three following domains: (i) to affirm and transmit the common values on which its civilization is founded; (ii) to assist in devising and disseminating ways of enabling young people to play a fuller part as European citizens, with a particular focus on teaching and learning; (iii) to identify and disseminate the best practice in education and training for citizenship in order to filter out the best means of acquiring the elements of European citizenship, and by initiating experimental projects which permit concrete forms of implementation.

The common values of European civilization upon which the Study Group have agreed are the following:

• human rights/human dignity
• fundamental freedoms
• democratic legitimacy
• peace and the rejection of violence as a means to an end
• respect for others
• a spirit of solidarity (within Europe and vis-à-vis the world as a whole)
• equitable development
• equal opportunities
• the principles of rational thought: the ethics of evidence and proof
• preservation of the ecosystem
• personal responsibility

New forms of co-operation must be developed for teaching these values. Increasing teaching contact hours to make space for civic education as a distinct subject, substituting civic education for other curriculum subjects, or developing a corps of specialised civics teachers are not the routes to follow. Civics education is a task for all schoolteachers, and thus we might rather envisage:

• studying in detail the key issues of discrimination among citizens, particularly those relating to the issue of gender and inter-ethnic relations;
• promoting university research on these issues;
• highlighting European achievements in the arts and sciences as a common heritage for all citizens;
• in the teaching of history, social science or literature, presenting analyses for those social, political and ethnic conflicts which lead to violence in Europe itself and in Europe's bordering regions.

As far as methods are concerned, a citizenship pedagogy must be developed. There is a need to encourage all active pedagogies, which are based on fostering critical awareness and independence of reasoning and groupwork. The development of the most significant current advance in this field, border pedagogy is included in this category. Border pedagogy is a strategy for learning about the cultural Other, by looking critically at how images, representations and texts are constructed and at their hidden messages. This approach facilitates learning how to identify one's own 'borders', those of others, and the borders of the external social world. Learning to appreciate differences as a positive opportunity must become one of the key competencies for Europeans. To this end, it would be desirable:

• to improve both knowledge of foreign languages and understanding of European cultures;
• to modernise history and geography curricula, which implies, in particular, a process of 'disarmament' of educational content which is often inspired by nationally based views of wars and conflicts;
• to support democratic styles of governance of educational establishments;
• to invest in the training of teachers and heads of establishment and to facilitate their mobility within Europe.

In considering those experiences that deserve impulse and dissemination at European level, the intercultural school is an opposite example. In liaison with the Member States, Europe must equip itself with the means for developing exemplary experiences of interculturality in the school. The intercultural school already empirically exists in the prestigious international schools and in those schools in areas with a high concentration of immigrants. The intercultural school must nevertheless be thought through on a broader scale, because interculturality in the school focuses the whole problematic of citizenship. This kind of school must become an experimental field with a view to preparing for its implementation on a wider front, in that multiculturality is an inevitability simply as a consequence of demographic trends."Reinforcing European competitiveness and preserving employment through education and training"

The threats posed for European competitiveness are currently underestimated. Education and training systems are insufficiently aware of the constraints of competitivity. Education and training systems cannot be held responsible for rising unemployment, but they nevertheless carry essential responsibility for knowledge transmission and for equipping young Europeans with the appropriate skills, qualifications and attitudes essential to confronting this challenge well.

The principal long term and valid option for promoting European competitivity in the market is to ensure a strong capacity in the quest for quality and innovation. In adapting to the characteristics of future-oriented enterprise, education and training systems could contribute to European competitivity and to the maintenance of employment. Through innovation and personal initiative, Europe could develop productive service sector employment and self-employment.

Placing quality at the centre implies taking into account, as optimally as possible, those for whom the service is provided: this goal must be returned to the foreground of concern. From this point of view, the direction to be taken by our systems of education and training is clear: they must orient themselves to those occupations most in demand. This means: being fully cognisant with the nature of this demand; considering the speed with which occupations are renewing themselves; fostering transversal key competencies which permit people to change their occupation; improving the level of technical understanding; and laying the foundations of intercultural competence which will permit people to operate in an international environment.

These are obligations imposed by international competition but the response must take place in osmosis with the other, intrinsic, aims of education and training. Three questions thus arise: (i) how can the supreme aim of education, personal development, be fostered within a context of the quest for raising the quality of human resources in the sense in which this is intended by enterprises; (ii) how can the simultaneous acquisition of knowledge and of behaviours be promoted; and (iii) how can the uncertainty which dominates the labour market, be reduced or at least, how can people protect themselves against labour market risks?

In order to respond to these questions, both education and training practices and those of enterprises will need to change at one and the same time. Firstly, it is necessary for those who do so to place less importance on filtering out the 'best brains' by selection mechanisms which are, in essence, orientated towards deductive capacities. Secondly, it is also necessary to find ways of organising pedagogy and accreditation so that the acquisition of knowledge and the acquisition of behaviours go together. From this point of view, the development and wider use of group and project based pedagogies, which are aimed to develop 'the collective can-do' appear advantageous. Lastly, it is important both that everyone acquires the capacity to exercise responsibility for their own education and training choices and that enterprises improve their capacity for predicting and managing future personnel needs.

Innovation permits a positive solution because it is intrinsically a value creator. The task for education systems is to develop individual capacities to solve problems; this is a capacity very different from that demonstrated by applying algorithms or any other form of pre-constructed thinking. The capacity to resolve problems is, today, the decisive capacity which enables individuals to adapt to the contemporary fast-moving world, as well as favouring the development of enterprises. Problem-solving capacity develops the learning organisation, enriches new competencies and permits the accumulation of a foundation specific knowledge which is becoming a decisive factor of competitivity and renewal.

This implies two consequences for our education and training systems: (i) in order to place Europe appropriately in the learning society of the future, these systems must seek to shape creative persons capable of problem-solving, and (ii) in order that these persons acquire new competencies, these systems themselves must become organisms which privilege quality and innovation.

In order to move in this direction, the Study Group recommends that Europe should contribute to improving: (i) relations between general and vocational education and training; (ii) the definition and the comparability of acquired competencies/skills; (iii) the definition and the acquisition of new occupational profiles.

In the first instance, improving the relations between general and vocational education and training, entails retention of the following principle: 'general education must provide preparation for a vocational skill, and vocational training must continue to develop the basic competencies provided by general education'.

The application of this principle leads to the following consequences for pedagogy and curricula:

• through to the close of compulsory schooling, basic competencies should be acquired in the general education system;
• teaching and learning methods should only use abstract deduction in those few areas where it seems essential and Europe must promote the best pedagogic practices that foster problem-solving;
• considerable effort should be made to develop learning about how to work in a group and to improve the accreditation of this kind of working method;
• interdisciplinarity should be developed in secondary education and at university;
• the acquisition of simple technical competencies must be made possible at all levels of general education from the onset of secondary schooling.

In organisational terms, this all leads to the following recommendations:

• whenever possible, the business sector should be significantly involved in vocational training because it does this better;
• stimulating a culture of training and learning at company level;
• but schools and teachers should concentrate on providing good quality general education, which implies that the school accepts that the business sector inserts itself into schooling in one way or another in order to effect vocational training, or at least to participate in its provision;
• the business sector and educational establishments should co-operate closely both in general education and in vocational education tracks. In an ideal system of such co-operation, 'teachers would be responsible for general education subjects in general education tracks in schools and for general education subjects within vocational training tracks organised by the business sector'. In addition, 'company trainers and other vocational trainers would be responsible for the vocational elements of general education tracks at school and for vocational training offered within the company';
• opportunities for work experience and in-company placements should be made available early on; taking such a route should allow for subsequent re-routing onto a higher education track.

In the second instance, it is necessary to facilitate personal mobility in Europe, to evaluate training systems, and to develop self-directed and lifelong learning. These all demand that skills/competencies are defined and rendered comparable. Therefore, without seeking to establish uniform and static reglementations, it is recommended that Europe should contribute to:

• defining grid reference charts of competencies;
• introducing systems for accrediting these skills;
• making these accreditation systems widely and continuously available;
• keeping a simple ongoing check, in real time (for example, through Internet), of individual skills acquisition progress for a certain number of competencies;
• developing recognition of vocational qualifications with the use of examination procedures that involve the social partners;
• speeding up the process for modular recognition between similar courses, at least at higher education level.

In the third instance, in order to define new occupational profiles, the Study Group considers that Europe could contribute without, of course, intending to establish a uniform reglementation to:

• for the principal occupational sectors, identifying the new kinds of enterprises which will characterise the European economy in the next decade;
• defining a limited number of generic basic occupations which would not necessarily refer to those occupations contained in standard industrial classifications;
• developing these new definitions by bringing them into a closer relationship with present occupational classifications;
• specifying the new occupational profiles in demand for the future;
• defining the competencies to be developed for such occupational profiles, both at initial entry to employment and during active working life."Maintaining social cohesion through education and training"

To make progress, Europe needs to mobilise all its human potential: not only young people but also adults needing education and training. Europe must take care not to sacrifice the idea of developing talents and the qualifications across the whole of her population to short-term exigencies. Long-term commitment to the new technological and market model which is currently establishing itself will not be achieved if it is experienced as socially unjust. In consequence, Europe must, at one and the same time, both consolidate its considerable achievements to date and put new means of integration into place.

What has been achieved comprises the will of European nations to ensure that education is democratically, and therefore easily, accessible to the largest number of people. By and large, it also includes, having given education and training systems the mission of providing the quality of opportunity to all. All European countries have affirmed these principles, which are at the heart of the social contract that exists between our societies and their education and training systems. These principles legitimate both the formation of elites and the corresponding existence of less advantageous social positions. A serious and permanent dysfunction at this level would undoubtedly be a significant obstacle to European development, including its economic development.

In terms of the democratisation of education and training, the achievements made to date are remarkable: everywhere in Europe, rates of educational participation have risen. In contrast, genuine progress towards equality of opportunity has encountered many more difficulties. The links between social origin and formal achievement at school and university have not weakened in the last thirty years. More seriously, we are now witnessing a high degree of wastage of potential, which is reflected in high failure/drop out rates and high levels of pupil alienation which are imputed to be related to the nature of the existing schooling system.

In order to take these phenomena into account, the Study Group considers that our education and training systems must show greater flexibility and adaptability. In order to do so, it is necessary to consolidate the dominant democratic principle which stipulates that all children have a right to universal knowledge to education, regardless of their inherent abilities, family or social circumstances. This will enable us to take better account of the growing gaps between the nature of initial circumstances and to compensate for these.

Within this perspective, the Study Group members have reached agreement on the following points: (i) it is essential to offer good quality general education to the greatest possible number; (ii) where conditions permit, the ideal would be for schools to continue to act as a social crucible, so that children from different backgrounds and circumstances have the opportunity to enjoy the same kind of education; (iii) but when the result is insufficient, more flexibility should be considered, whether in relation to specific teaching and learning methods, to specific tracks or to the question of repeating a school year; (iv) when outcomes remain unsatisfactory, we must not hesitate in envisaging specific support measures which foresee, for all pupils involved, return to the mainstream at a later date.

The Study Group affirms that the consolidation of genuine democratisation in education rests on a guarantee to all young Europeans that they will complete compulsory schooling with a foundation of recognised basic knowledge and skills.

Reinforcing the democratisation of education and promoting equality of opportunities implies the development of new means of integration. The critical points comprise: (i) pre-school education must be generally available; (ii) guidance and counselling services must enable young people to define a professional project and allow them to benefit from advice at crucial stages, that is, at the end of compulsory schooling and at university entrance; (iii) the specific treatment of the excluded who are, today, in a particularly difficult situation in that they do not posses recognised vocational qualifications; (iv) lifelong learning, which takes cognisance of the fact that learning is a continuous process, thus integrating the different aspects of education and training for given ages.

Within this overall emerging perspective, three main priority areas for European level action are discernible:

• contributing to give a guarantee at European level and for all young Europeans that they will learn and acquire a foundation of essential basic skills. This implies: (i) European-level meetings between national programme committees to define the content and nature of this foundation; (ii) wide availability of systems for the accreditation of skills; (iii) dissemination of best pedagogic practices and the promotion of manuals and multimedia tools devoted to the attainment of this objective;
• facilitating guidance and counselling at critical moments of transition, notably by placing information about generic skills and new occupational profiles at the disposition of educational establishments, together with diverse information activities;
• developing experiments that aim to support, popularise and disseminate pre-school education and the struggle against social exclusion, notably by means of pre-school and primary support outside school hours, non-formal systems of lifelong learning (notably knowledge exchange networks and the Universités populaires); and second chance measures, diversified in national and local contexts, which are directed to encouraging and enabling formally unqualified and socially excluded young people to return to the learning activities which are indispensable to the learning society.

Europe should be able to use its large action programmes, in particularly Leonardo da Vinci and Socrates, in order to initiate specific experiments, whilst leaving Member States to implement these on a wider scale if they do so wish. These experiments could aim to disseminate good practice, in particular in pre-school education, in primary schooling and in the struggle against exclusion. An equilibrium needs to be found in the allocation of available funding, thus reserving a given proportion for highly innovative projects (about a quarter), and the remainder (about three quarters) for projects which aim to disseminate outcomes and to transfer good practice. In effect, the particularity of this proposal resides in concentrating on a number of interlinked problems at the same time, and exploring the potential for their mutual articulation.

"Education and training in the information society"

Undoubtedly, the exponential development of new information technologies (IT) will lead to profound transformations in education and training. Some even talk of a new paradigm which will overturn educational process and methods, educational actors' roles and positions, and even the concept of education itself. Among the potential changes identified, the following should be noted: (i) the transition from objective to constructed knowledge; (ii) the transition from an industrial to a learning society; (iii) the change in educational mission from instruction to the provision of methods for personal learning; (iv) the increasing and perhaps, in the future, dominant role of technology in the communication process and in knowledge acquisition; (v) the shift away from formal educational institutions such as schools and universities towards organisational structures for learning which have yet to be determined.

The Study Group considers that these developments will take place more slowly than certain current hypotheses would suppose. Technological innovations become social innovations necessarily as slowly as the capacities of organisations and individuals are able to assimilate them. Nevertheless, IT presents a considerable challenge for education and training systems. Today, many take the view that the era of school-based education is coming to a close. This will liberate educational process and will place more control in the hands of those providers that are more innovative than traditional educational structures.

The worlds of education and training must, however, take advantage of the considerable opportunity offered by these new information technologies; not only by using them, but by taking part in their development. The Study Group considers that IT provide a means to improve education: (i) by freeing teachers from numerous less central tasks, IT helps to make space for the development of more important and challenging elements of teaching practice, especially pedagogy; (ii) by improving teaching and learning methods, for example, in expanding access to data and multimedia simulations and in introducing objective assessments that are immediately accessible to the learner; (iii) by encouraging individual and small group work; (iv) by encouraging the world of education to open itself up to the community, to review its relationship with pupils and to participate in lifelong learning.

Within compulsory education it should probably be seen as complementary to traditional teaching, and in post compulsory rarely would be completely adequate alone. The policy should be to help young people to make proper use of the available technologies. The resistance to their use in public education systems probably stems from social factors and capital budget constraints rather than limitations to the current technology. The natural resistance of the traditional public system will need to be overcome by a combination of encouragement, goals, resources, consumer orientation and competition from the private sector. It might also be necessary to create, at European or national levels, a public sector virtual competitor to complement other public provision, i.e. a virtual school, college or university, at least in subjects or at levels where private sector competition is either inadequate or only available to the better-off.

As IT understood as tools and methods and not as a 'subject' in itself comes into more general use in mainstream education, and in the home, it is necessary to bring about changes in attitudes and to acquire the necessary equipment for schools and other such establishments. We shall also have to promote the technologies among families and with parents and young people, some of whom may find learning with less human teacher contact disconcerting. At the same time we must be vigilant as to product quality and the results obtained. Looked at from this angle, the creation at European level of a skills accreditation system will be an important means of keeping a check on the skills really being acquired via IT. Whether there is a need or 'space' for a European-wide development of educational software for 3-21 but available to all ages, grounded in European culture and philosophy, and freely available as a public good, is an issue that deserves further urgent examination.

Finally, what is at stake is also important for Europe. It is doubtful whether our continent will take its rightful place in this new market if our education and training systems do not rapidly respond to the challenge. The development of these technologies, in the context of strong international competition, requires that the effects of scale play their full part. If the world of education and training does not use IT, Europe will become a mass market too late. The transformation of education and training as described earlier will then be shaped by other players.

The development and use of IT in education and training demands action on a variety of fronts, which implies that the various policy initiatives that exist in this field must be brought into co-operation with each other. The Study Group's report identifies some fifteen possible dimensions of response, which, taken together, relate to three main problems:

• the development and provision of appropriate equipment (hardware and software) for all educational levels and contexts, together with the multiplication of networking between educational establishments and resource centres (such as public libraries);
• the encouragement and support of the use of IT by teachers and trainers themselves, which entails establishing opportunities for progressive familiarisation, training and adaptation of multimedia tools;
• the fostering of innovations in learning processes themselves and for accreditation purposes, including for those competencies acquired in non-formal ways.

"Making education and training systems more dynamic and giving support to the actors"

The Study Group considers that if our education and training systems are to implement the suggestions made in the preceding chapters, there are five things we need to do: (i) orient the education and training systems more to users; (ii) increase productivity and effectiveness; (iii) upgrade the jobs of teacher and heads; (iv) introduce evaluation procedures both to encourage reorganisation (the 'mirror effect') and to enable users to make informed choices; (v) be more open to all forms of co-operation.

To respond to these briefly sketched imperatives, it would be desirable to draw on the abundant and valuable research conducted in recent decades on school effectiveness, school development, teaching and training methods, educational action on behalf of the disadvantaged, etc., and inform policy-makers of their findings. The dissemination of research knowledge combined with practitioner experience will permit the identification and choice of the best implementation strategies for the necessary changes.

The Study Group considers that transmitting a vision for education is more important than the general formal framework of the system itself, but it is also important to establish a fairly flexible organisation to make the vision a reality. The vision and the aim is that education should make it possible to give everyone the opportunity for personal development and for achievement at the high levels required by the new competitive economic context, and also to acquire the personal resources needed for an all-round personal development and for social integration. Modern trends indicate the need to pay more attention to the top and bottom rungs of the achievement ladder, which are both most directly affected by contemporary developments. This means we need to focus on (i) people with specialist qualifications (of whatever level) who will find themselves competing internationally with their counterparts from other regions of the world, and (ii) those who will be excluded from the learning society because they lack the resources for economic and social integration. This does not imply that those in between do not merit our attention, just that a special effort is needed on the two extremes.

Nevertheless, regardless of the organisational form and the kind of decision-making processes adopted in the different educational systems of the European Union, the objectives need to be clearly shared at European level, so that our young people know what we are trying to achieve for them. The past twenty years have seen a notable convergence of production costs, relative product prices, currencies and incomes. Yet age-specific educational targets, the teaching and learning methods, curricula and assessment methods have hardly converged at all. This makes no sense. Broad-scale European initiatives are necessary here if we wish to breathe life into the European vision. It is particularly important that at the critical ages (end of compulsory schooling/upper secondary/each university cycle) Europe specifies its aims unambiguously and informs all young Europeans where they stand personally, as well as how their school or college is performing with respect to those aims. This will ensure that our educational establishments pay greater attention to users and to their education as European citizens.

It is not easy to grasp the meaning of productivity and effectiveness in the case of education and training establishments. Any system of measurement is by definition imperfect when applied to establishments themselves. Despite all these difficulties, the Study Group considers that the efforts made in the past few years to establish productivity criteria must be continued. This trend implies support for European research on evaluation procedures and the definition of performance criteria. Europe must contribute to the implementation of these criteria by (i) relating them to clearly defined priorities based on the principles outlined with respect to the search for quality, and (ii) concentrating on the sole incontestable measure of performance, i.e. what pupils or trainees have really learned and how this impacts on their social and working life. Education and training systems will thus be more orientated towards users.

Teachers play a primordial role because they are the only people in our societies providing a service of such a marked multidimensional character. Contemporary trends are that their role is becoming even more multi-faceted, because it increasingly incorporates social, behavioural, civic, economic and technological dimensions. Teaching is an activity that can less and less be viewed from within a subject disciplinary logic, but many teachers do not have the training or experience to cope with this greatly extended role. It is clear that they should benefit from high quality pre-service teacher education.

It follows from the above that education systems will not evolve without the active participation of the basic players involved. Their everyday practice in their own establishments will change the way our systems operate. Therefore, these players must be given the appropriate means to exercise their autonomy and to find a sound balance between inducements (or pressures) and support at establishment level. Initially, then, evaluation is indispensable because it generates the information that provides through the 'mirror effect' a basis for continually re-evaluating one's own position. However, evaluation also has a second and equally important function. Publicly accessible, comprehensible and well founded evaluation provides a clear picture of the types of education and training available. This greater transparency is necessary so that users know what they are doing when they choose a particular field, establishment or training course. Thus, sound evaluation will greatly improve the average productivity of the education and training systems, since the learner can exercise free choice.

Therefore, the Study Group recommends focusing on the concept of 'added value' as one of the main possible guidelines for evaluation procedures. In an educational context, added value is the difference between the knowledge and skills learners possess when they enter an establishment or course, and what they possess when they leave or finish. Some Member States have set up evaluation procedures along these lines, and expanding this approach across the European Union would provide a basis for comparison. This concept of relativity is important, notably to allow teachers to alter their approaches, and the authorities to measure the return on public spending more easily.

Our education and training systems in particular our education systems must develop a wide range of partnerships with the other players in society. This point has been made in connection with education-industry relations. Vocational training will not develop satisfactorily without a firm partnership with companies. The same is true for social cohesion, where partnerships with local authorities and the voluntary sector are crucial.

"What action should the European Union pursue?"

Article 126 of the Treaty limits the European Union's avenues of action as regards the organisation and operation of education and training systems, which clearly fall within national competence. The Study Group takes the view that this is an advantage, given the desirability of having a number of pathways to achieving similar ends. On the other hand, no interpretation of the concept of subsidiarity should be so restrictive that it prevents Europe following discussion among the Member States and in collaboration with them from declaring what the main common aims of our education and training systems are to be. Europe must also contribute, through initiatives and projects, to the wide dissemination of best practice and must encourage progress towards those aims. The Study Group takes the view that these efforts require more close collaboration with the Member States than has been the case to date. If we wish to lend concrete expression to the European vision that we offer to our young people and to develop lifelong learning, then education and training must be accorded a more central position in European preoccupations.

With this in mind, the guidelines for Union action on education and training systems could be to:

• proclaim a general European aim that serves as a guide for the different systems: such as the one proposed in this report: 'make it possible to give everyone the opportunity for personal development and to achieve at the high levels required by the new international environment and to acquire the resources needed for social integration'. The declared aim should make it clear that Europe (i) wishes to remain competitive, but (ii) will not resign itself to having an irreducible core of socially excluded persons; and (iii) wants to promote the development of the person and the education of active citizens;
• anchoring this goal either in the Treaty or in another legal foundation;
• secure the financial means to achieve this goal: if we wish to see Europe placed amongst the best educational standards in the world (Japan, Finland, USA), it will be necessary to devote a full percentage point of GDP resources in addition to that spent today.

It would also be necessary to:

• develop initial and continuing teacher education and training by the identification and discovery of best practice;
• institute a specific programme of exchanges and in-service education and training for headteachers and directors of education and training establishments;
• encourage innovative learning practices in educational establishments and training centres;
• pinpoint, study and disseminate good practice with respect to productivity and the search for quality in educational establishments and training centres;
• devise common methods for the evaluation of education and training based on experiences in national levels, in order to benefit from a comparative dimension;
• study the possibility of a legal and operational framework at European level that facilitates the development of partnerships between schools, companies and local authorities;
• look into the possibility of setting up venture capital companies to encourage the development of innovative teaching and learning products.