Educational policies and initiatives of the European Union

In the European Union education is the responsibility of Member States; European Union institutions play a supporting role

According to Art. 165 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Community shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States,through actions such as promoting the mobility of citizens, designing joint study programmes, establishing networks, exchanging information or teaching languages of the European Union. The Treaty also contains a commitment to promote life-long learning for all citizens of the Union.

The EU also funds educational, vocational and citizenship-building programmes which encourage EU citizens to take advantage of opportunities which the EU offers its citizens to live, study and work in other countries. The best known of these is the Erasmus programme, under which more than 2,000,000 students have taken part in inter-university exchange and mobility over the last 20 years.

The European Union adopted its first education programme (the COMETT programme, designed to stimulate contacts and exchanges between universities and industry) in July 1987. This programme was rapidly followed by the ERASMUS programme, which promoted inter-university contacts and cooperation, as well as substantial student mobility (as, in 1989, did the "Youth for Europe" programme, the EU's first youth exchange support scheme). These programmes were adopted by the EU countries but with considerable support from the European Parliament which made budgets available even before the legal instruments had been adopted.

The European Union has two different types of instrument to increase the quality and openness of the education and training systems of the EU's Member States: a set of policy instruments through which EU countries are encouraged to develop their own education systems and to learn from each other's successes; and a substantial programme to support exchanges, networks and mutual learning between schools, universities or training centres as well as between the political authorities responsible for these areas in the different Member States.

The Commission seeks to encourage Member States to improve the quality of their education and training systems in two main ways: through a process of setting targets and publishing the position of Member States in achieving them and by stimulating debate on subjects of common interest. This is done using the process known as the Open Method of Coordination

not more than 10% of school pupils should leave school before the end of compulsory schooling

the numbers of Maths, Science and Technology university graduates should increase by at least 15%, and the proportion of girls within that number should also increase

at least 85% of 22-year olds should have completed upper secondary education

the percentage of low-achieving 15-year olds in reading literacy, as measured at level 1 in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment should have decreased by at least 20% compared to the year 2000

participation of the 25-64 age group in lifelong learning (i.e., continuing education or training including in-company skills development) should be not less than 12.5% per annum.

Education and training programmes INSIDE THE EU The first European Union exchange programmes were

the COMETT Programme for Industry-University links and exchanges, launched in 1987 (and discontinued in 1995); the Erasmus university exchange programme was launched in the same year. Similar programmes have been running ever since, and as from 2007 all the education and training programmes were brought together in one single programme; the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2013.[11] The Lifelong Learning programme comprises separate sub-programmes for schools; universities and higher education; vocational education and training; adult education; teaching about the EU in universities; and a 'horizontal' programme for policy development.

OUTSIDE THE EU the first EU programme to promote

educational exchange and cooperation between educational institutions inside the EU and those outside it was the Tempus programme, adopted on 7 May 1990 by the Council as part of the assistance provided by the European Community of the day to the countries breaking free of Soviet rule.

The idea behind Tempus was that individual universities in the European Community could contribute to the process of rebuilding free and effective university systems in partner countries; and that a bottom-up process through partnerships with individual universities in these countries would provide a counterweight to the influence of the much less trusted Ministries, few of which had by then undergone serious change since Soviet domination. The programme was an immediate success; and by 1993 the number of participating countries had grown from five at the start to eleven. The programme was subsequently enlarged to include the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union; again to include the countries of the Western Balkans; and finally to cover the Mediterranean countries

Tempus was followed by a series of smaller programmes built more round the mobility of academics towards the EU. These included the ALFA/ALBAN programmes with Latin American universities;[15] the Asia-Link programme;[16] and others, sometimes time-limited. A number of these appear to have been set up as a means of development assistance rather than with the development of universities as such, an impression strengthened by the fact that they were managed by the European Commission's development assistance service EuropeAid rather than (like Tempus or Erasmus Mundus programme)by its Education and Culture department.