We are busy building. Building education attuned to learners’ needs and interests, leading to quality outcomes, and leaving nobody behind. Education that allows learners to find a vocation for themselves, get equipped with the right skills, and contribute to the economy and society. Education that inspires people to keep learning, throughout life.
Excellent education and training is not only a personal aspiration, however. It is very much a societal, a national, and a European one. If we want the European Union and its people to prosper, and be at the forefront of resilient, innovative and sustainable economies, then we must remove barriers to learning and improve access to quality education. And we must enable learners to move more easily between education systems in different countries, so that they can learn and train and find jobs across the continent.
This common vision has been the blueprint for our work together with the Member States over the past years. We have been building the European Education Area hand in hand with the education community, social partners, civil society and other partners. It is a true construction site, with the delivery date set for 2025. In 2023 we will be reaching the halfway point, which is a good moment to look back, check the progress, and discuss how we can together move forward.
The foundations for the Area are being built through a shared guidance for policy reform in EU Member States’ education and training systems. This guidance tackles topics such as how to improve learning outcomes at school level, create inclusive learning environments and build resilient school systems in light of lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, strengthen cooperation between universities, or how learning and teaching can be mobilised to support sustainable development.
Growing on these foundations are a number of concrete initiatives, making a difference for learners and teachers already. Among them you find European Universities bringing EU’s higher education to a new level, Teacher Academies testing new models of cross-border teacher education, Centres of Vocational Excellence driving reforms in vocational education and training, or the Education for Climate Coalition, a grassroots education community focused on green skills.
Who is the investor behind this big endeavour, you may ask. Besides the Member States’ funding for policy reform, the EU funds are substantial: the Erasmus+ programme, the Recovery and Resilience Facility as the key instrument of the NextGenerationEU programme, and EU cohesion policy funds are all contributing. It is estimated that total EU expenditure on education and skills between 2021 and 2027 will triple compared to the 2014-20 period. That’s quite a feat! Moreover, with the new learning lab on quality investment in education and training, we are putting in place an additional support to Member States in making effective, efficient and evidence-based choices on education funding, so that every euro is invested where it can bring most value.
As every serious construction site, we are and will continue to be accountable. We have set ourselves clear EU targets, and we report on them annually through the Education and Training Monitor. You can find it online on https://education.ec.europa.eu and check how Malta is contributing to this common task.
It is also clear that a lot of work is still ahead of us to complete the project: this certainly goes for ensuring effective implementation of policy reforms, quality investment of funds, and solid monitoring of progress. We also need to make systemic efforts to improve equity and quality in education and training, and tackle growing teacher shortages. We need to make digital education both effective and inclusive, equipping learners with digital savviness for work and life. And we must bring more girls and women into science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and specifically into ICT domains. Because if the EU wants to reap full benefits of the potential of technology, we need all hands on deck.
Finally, we must not lose sight of the long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the on-going Russian invasion of Ukraine, which have tested EU education systems over the past years and mobilised Member States to find solutions fast, together.
So, yes, the European Education Area is very much a construction site. And the beauty of it is that it doesn’t require us to demolish anything in the process. Quite the opposite: the European Education Area helps all Member States’ education systems grow, reform, and evolve as they themselves see fit. They are fully in charge. The European Commission helps them work together, learn from each other, put forward initiatives of common interest, and it provides funding – all of this is the kind of binding material to hold a good structure together. For the benefit of learners and teachers, for the benefit of our economies and societies, and for the future of our Union.