Seminar
“Views on New Generation of Community Education and Training Programmes after 2006”

Wednesday, 26 May 2004, 10:00 – 12:30
European Parliament

Organised by AEGEE-Europe

Under the Patronage of Mrs Lissy Groener - MEP

The seminar panel, chaired by Dan Luca from EurActiv, comprised the representatives of the institutions, NGOs, academic and business world - Mr. Adam Pokorny from the European Commission (DG EAC), prof. Nadine Engels from the Association for Teacher Education in Europe and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Mr. Peter Lacy - Executive Director of The European Academy of Business in Society and the representatives of AEGEE.

The first session of the seminar was the presentation of the speakers.

After the welcoming speech of Nicola Rega, President of AEGEE-Europe, Dan Luca from EurActiv mentioned the first conference on the launch of the current education programmes’ that took place at the European Parliament in 1999. He stressed the important role of AEGEE, European Youth Forum and ESIB in liasing with the Commission during the implementation of the current education programmes.

Mr Adam Pokorny from the European Commission Directorate General for Education and Culture elaborated on the question about how associations can help in decision-making process. He emphasized the Commission’s experience of 20 years of European education and integration and said that feedback from the programme participants regarding the evaluation of Socrates, Tempus and Leonardo proves that these programmes are extremely valuable. The Commission official highlighted the importance of having public consultations with AEGEE and other organizations, while admitting that current programmes and procedures, as well as the language of the Commission's communications, are quite complicated. He attached the importance to the continuity of the education programmes and concluded that more substantial progress is needed to shape the programmes in a way to support Bologna and Lisbon Processes. Pokorny highlighted that new programmes should be somehow simplified and made more comprehensive. To this end, the Commission is introducing an umbrella lifelong learning programme to cover the 4 main pillars namely Comenius, Erasmus, Leonardo and Grundtvig. He stated that Tempus Plus was a very successful programme in the past but there is an enormous challenge at the moment due to the new neighbours of the enlarged EU, and added that the Western Balkans do not participate in the Tempus programme at the moment, but most probably they will participate in the Tempus Plus programme.

Following Mr. Pokorny’s speech, Prof. Nadine Engels from the Association for Teacher Education in Europe mentioned that the programmes are quite valuable and voiced her association’s appreciation for the basic decision to give modernisation of the educational programmes a central place in the strategy. She explained that the report submitted by the Council on concrete objectives of education and trainings was of pivotal importance and added that improving teacher and trainer education has been a crucial factor at the moment faced by the teaching staff in Europe. Prof. Engels furthermore raised the issue of quality and stressed the importance and necessity of recruitment of high quality teachers to improve the standards. She also noted that only the Tempus plus programme amongst the programmes pays attention to the issues of quality and teacher recruitment. She concluded her speech by raising some key questions: How to deal then with flexibility in an integrated programme? How to work on social cohesion in Europe? And whether it has it been investigated who are the pupils and students involved in mobility schemes?

Mr Peter Lacy from the European Academy of Business in Society took the floor after Prof. Engels to comment on the programmes from a business point of view. He pointed out that the idea of mobility, cooperation and Europeanness is a noble goal. Mr Lacy criticized that ways to achieve goals of the Lisbon process were a bit lost in the course of implementation of the programmes, while raising the question how to ensure that Europe is becoming the most competitive knowledge-based society. He pointed out that knowledge economy is not without its own social problems and it covers also the problems of access to knowledge and mobility. He recommended that the results of the Lisbon and Copenhagen Summits should be the priority issues on the agenda.

Diana Filip from AEGEE and the EURECA project team presented a proposal entitled "Blended Learning", a proposal for a new education programme coming out from the results of the EURECA project 2002 and stemming from the fact that European education of today doesn´t reflect the European dimension and raise awareness of European Citizenship.
She mentioned the past AEGEE project aiming to review the types of higher education programmes, focusing on European community programs. She pointed out that the Blended Learning AEGEE is proposing is combining presence learning and e-learning activities by use of summer courses and subsequent virtual courses. She concluded that such a proposal would increase possibilities for intercultural learning and fostering mobility.

After the presentations, the representatives of various NGOs participating in the seminar took a constructive critical look at the programmes, drawing the Commission’s attention to different aspects and judging the programmes from their background's perspective. Mr Jonathan Eden from EVTA argued that the Commission should bring together education and training, simplify the language of its proposals and calls for tenders, standardize the application forms, establish a permanent joint brainstorming unit from Socrates and Leonardo Unit to elaborate on the problems and renewal of the programmes and he recommended to reduce the gap between educational and vocational training. European Youth Forum on the other hand raised questions concerning junior ERASMUS Programme noting that Comenius proposes short term exchanges, but there are no programmes for 6-12 months for secondary school students. Another question posed was the involvement of private schools in the new life long learning programmes, and the answer came from the Commission stating that private institutions need to be recognised in order to participate in ERASMUS and European Commission doesn´t exclude private institutions from the programmes. A couple of questions were raised by the President of AEGEE, Mr. Nicola Rega, concerning the amount of Commission’s investments in virtual mobility and relations between universities and businesses in finding common platforms.

Mr. Adam Pokorny also commented that although the role of the European Parliament is not always very visible, the impact of MEPs on education can be substential. Pokorny concluded: “The Commission widely supports student mobility and language learning. With our post-enlargement new members, The EU has a great challenge to raise, and the proposals of AEGEE fall into this category”.
The Commission realises the importance of a constant public consultation with AEGEE and other NGOs and institutions to give the best shape to the new programmes, and thus facilitate its work for the European society.