A New Life for European Education!

We, European citizens feel that social inequalities are a time bomb that threaten our society [1]: as recent events have painfully reminded us, an uneducated and abandoned youth circumscribed to on European city, albeit its capital [2], is a danger to the whole continent.

To our mind, education, from preschool to higher education, is the most constructive way to fight against social inequalities: it should enable any young person to give a positive, ambitious and constructive direction to his/her life, regardless of his/her social and economic background. Unfortunately, it is clear that in many European countries, education still does not sufficiently fulfill its role of social advancement, despite a clear diagnosis of this problem for many years and the clear demonstration of realistic political solutions [3].

It therefore seems to us essential and urgent that the EU put pressure on its member states to improve the quality of education on our continent, especially regarding equal opportunities for students. In this way, the EU would rekindle the idealism that marked its creation and would take a crucial step in building a social and humanist Europe, whose absence is so cruelly felt today.

The EU could, for example, support the creation of a quality assurance agency for European education, a public body whose role would be to invite member states to continually challenge and improve their educational systems. This agency should not substitute nations or regions in the organization of teaching. However, it could stimulate the exchange of good practices through the establishment of a platform for sharing and translating educational excellence tools, the organization of mobility of all education stakeholders within the European Union, the definition of key competencies for students and the provision of assessment tools thereof, etc.

In addition, this quality assurance agency should act as a permanent monitoring of the Member States or even temporary guardianship in case of manifest and repeated breaches. To do so, it would establish minimum quality standards for all European education systems. These standards, without claiming to guarantee the quality of teaching, should provide an evidence‐based framework [3], based on a small number of easily objectified and simple criteria founded on common sense.

For example, let us quote the following criteria, most of which have been tried and tested through competence assessment and employability skills in the most performing education systems in terms of social equity, development and student motivation of students:

• A maximum number of students per adult (typically 4 in preschool and primary school, 8 in secondary school...) enabling the use of teaching methods suited to the pace and needs of each student;
• Individualized and early monitoring of students with difficulties, possibly involving parents on a voluntary basis and professionals (psychologists, speech therapists...) available in each school;
• Common core training for all students until a minimum age (typically 15 years old), based on a balance between intellectual, technical, social, artistic and sports competences, with the aim to develop rigor, effort, creativity and autonomy;
• Early language learning through immersion classes from preschool, as well as CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) programmes, taught by native‐speaking or near‐native language experts;
• A general openness to the outside world and to other cultures, particularly through outings, meetings, exchanges and travel;
• Digital society education, through the use of tools but also through a critical reflection about them;
• Freedom of choice of the following: for parents regarding the choice of school for their children, for head teachers regarding the choice of their teaching staff, for teachers regarding their educational choices;
• A widespread quality‐assurance policy based on a constructive 360‐degree assessment of all stakeholders (teachers, principals, inspectors, administrative...)
• Minimum 5 years of graduate studies for teachers, regardless of the educational level targeted, and wages adjusted accordingly;
• Genuinely free education for all;
• High‐quality school infrastructure and equipment.
  

Further information:

[1] Analysis of the societal impact of inequalities: GINI European project http://gini‐research.org/, TED conference by Richard Wilkinson https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson?language=en

[2] Documentary on the feelings of students having "benefitted" from a particularly inegalitarian education system (in Brussels) when confronted to a much more egalitarian system (in Finland). Chicago Finland.e D'Broej https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwKXocwjuvA [in French with Dutch subtitles]

[3] Analysis of education systems: OECD PISA survey http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa‐2012‐results‐overview‐EN.pdf, TED conference by Andreas Schleicher https://www.ted.com/talks/andreas_schleicher_use_data_to_build_better_schools; European network EURYDICE https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Main_Page

The authors

Jean‐Marc Sparenberg, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium [email protected]/* <![CDATA[ */!function(t,e,r,n,c,a,p){try{t=document.currentScript||function(){for(t=document.getElementsByTagName('script'),e=t.length;e‐‐;)if(t[e].getAttribute('data‐cfhash'))return t[e]}();if(t&&(c=t.previousSibling)){p=t.parentNode;if(a=c.getAttribute('data‐cfemail')){for(e='',r='0x'+a.substr(0,2)|0,n=2;a.length‐n;n+=2)e+='%'+('0'+('0x'+a.substr(n,2)&hatr).toString(16)).slice(‐2);p.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(decodeURIComponent(e)),c)}p.removeChild(t)}}catch(u){}}()/* ]]> */
Jennifer Valcke, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Frank‐Uwe Schwarz, Belgium