Euro-MPs see education as key to improving Europe’s competitiveness

Citation

(2006), "Euro-MPs see education as key to improving Europe’s competitiveness", Education + Training, Vol. 48 No. 2/3. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2006.00448bab.009

Euro-MPs see education as key to improving Europe’s competitiveness

Investing in education appears to be the best way of safeguarding Europe’s competitiveness against economies that can produce goods and services at a lower cost, say Euro-MPs. They have suggested a number of measures aimed at helping the EU to meet its Lisbon strategy goal of becoming the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. The measures include:

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  increasing spending on the Education and Training 2010 programme;

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  promoting further the mobility of students, trainees, workers and their families;

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  improving the systems under which qualifications gained in one member state are recognised in all the others;

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  increasing by around 15 per cent the number of people holding science qualifications;

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  making national policies on education and lifelong learning more coherent; and

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  improving access to employment for young apprentices and the unemployed.

Meanwhile, Euro-MPs have emphasised the importance of language learning as a way of integrating immigrants into the European Union (EU). The MEPs have called for extra support for immigrant children in primary and secondary schools, especially when the children have not mastered the language of the host country. MEPs believe that all children in the EU should, from an early age, learn two languages in addition to their mother tongue. Euro-MPs called on the Commission to step up support for the specific training of teachers from immigrants’ countries of origin. The MEPs also recommended encouraging, through educational and other programmes, the integration of immigrants who are not of school age.