European Education and Training Systems in the Second Decennium of the Lisbon Strategy
With the Lisbon Strategy, education and training (E&T) entered the centre stage of European policy making. It was realised that lifelong learning is a key driver of the Lisbon Strategy as expressed in the integrated guidelines for growth and employment. The leading challenges in the field of E&T were embedded in the existing policy framework and open method of coordination supporting the Lisbon process as documented in the “Education and Training 2010 Work Programme”.
While the (revised) Lisbon Strategy seems to start paying off in terms of growth and employment, a need is felt to further strengthen its knowledge dimension through (among other things) intensified efforts to combat early school leaving, greater mobility of knowledge and human capital, pooling of research investments and a boost in technological innovation (EC, Strategic report on the renewed Lisbon strategy, 2007). At the same time, the context has changed quite radically since the launch of the Lisbon Strategy with the EU enlargement, major economic shocks, new geopolitical tensions, increased awareness of the threat of global warming, etc. Whereas the knowledge-based society is still commonly seen as the best policy paradigm to address such challenges, there is a need to think forward about what European E&T systems should look like beyond 2010, and to develop the strategic basis for the follow-up to the Lisbon Strategy post 2010.
As a basis for the European Commission’s forward thinking, this report provides first ideas on perspectives for European E&T systems in the medium and long term, based on the existing knowledge in education sciences. Given the nature of the topic which is oriented far into the future, this task by necessity has to be mainly a brainstorming exercise. Against this background, the report first discusses key challenges in three main dimensions (demography, sustainability and globalisation) and then examines their implications for European E&T systems beyond 2010. Broadly speaking, the challenges were already there a decade ago; but some new developments have emerged after the turn of the Millennium that may require adjustments in European E&T strategies.
