|
|
Conclusions
|
As you know Austria is taking over the torch of the presidency from the UK on 1 July 1998. Austria is the first country of the 1995 enlargement round to have the honour of taking on the European Union Presidency. This is a big task for any country, let alone a particularly small country. For Austria education and knowledge is becoming more and more important in today's science or knowledge-based society. The fact is that all the member states are confronted by similar challenges. Education policy is playing a greater and greater part at both the European Union level and at the level of the individual member countries. There are some very important decisions looming in European Education Policy. Now I would like right at the beginning to make a couple of comments about who is responsible for education in Austria, as there is a difference to the situation here in the United Kingdom. We have two ministries that share between them the responsibility for schooling and for training, so schooling and adult education belong to the Federal Ministry for Education and Cultural Matters and science and research are the responsibility of the Federal Ministry for Science. But apart from these two ministries we also have other ministries with a specific agenda in education policies such as the Ministry of Industry or the Federal Ministry for Labour Health and Social Matters. Education Policy Now I am going on to concentrate on the Ministry of Education and the Ministry for Science and then I am going to start by making some general comments with regards to education policy. Then I will move on to some focal points and then give you a brief idea on what we are planning to do in the context of Austria's presidency. All the member states of European Union have been confronted by similar changes in their societies. These are characterised by the increasing importance of new technologies, by the growth in international linkage and by the demand for more self-determination and involvement on the part of their citizens. Far-reaching changes in the field of employment are putting high demands on the people involved and this is why the European labour market requires a considerable amount of flexibility and mobility. It is necessary to have well-educated people with well-founded knowledge who can act in various different spheres of life. We do lay down the foundation for this in our schools, but we then want to go on expanding, renewing and deepening these skills in the process of lifelong learning so that people who are working in industry and services will be able to continue acting effectively. Education is, of course, the most important foundation for our vocational skills. It is only if we have very deep reaching further training and ongoing training that we will be able to help reduce unemployment in Europe and continue to improve European competitiveness. European Citizenship However, education is also a very important aspect in the development of the European citizenship, particularly bearing in mind the background of growing multiculturalism. We have to pay particular attention to European culture and history because it is only possible to bring about European citizenship if people come to terms with Europe and the basic values of the European Union. Active European citizens not only need to have a very broad basic knowledge but also need to be capable of innovation. They must have certain talents and skills and we want to try and ensure that these are properly supported. The central focus of educational institutions, that is schools as well as establishments of adult education, must be to try and make sure that people who learn can constantly grow and develop and be prepared for lifelong training. Since the '90s the European Commission has again and again emphasised the importance of education in vocational skilling for its citizens and for the industrial position of European states. Education has become one of our most important tasks and policy guidelines are being developed. One goal of the European Union is going to have to be to secure vocational initial training for young people. This means that young people should be able to make a selection from different ranges of training packages and then be prepared to start their working lives in accordance with skills they have achieved. It is the task, of course, for both governments and industry to ensure that the appropriate offers are being made to them. When we bear in mind the increasing age of our workforce, however, it is clear that the success of initial training is only going to be limited. This is why we attach such importance to strategic and practical considerations for lifelong learning and want to be able to respond to these changing conditions. This is why we also have to analyse the various requirements for skills and qualifications and if we can see new trends developing we have to define new fields of action and then take account of this in the training packages that we offer. We are not only talking about the speedy renewal of the content of what we provide with education and training, but we want to have new types and methods of teaching and learning. We also have to bear in mind the need for creativity management skills and know-how with new media and technologies. Indeed we also need to look at the training of teachers and further education trainers. They cannot remain excluded from the repercussions of upheaval in society. There are joint efforts at the level of the European Union to ensure that we introduce innovative projects for teaching including new methods of communication and technology, the ICT approach. We are also talking about cultural education and creativity. Creativity is considered relevant today in a range of different disciplines. There is agreement that this is a relevant factor in the context of learning processes. Whether we are looking at schools or outside schools more and more importance is being attached to encouraging creativity. This is both beneficial for the development of the individual personality and it encourages the development of specific social skills. Creativity is an important pre-condition to ensure your own development but it also helps to shape the future. The citizens of the European Union should not only be able to develop their own personalities as well as possible but they should be able to be innovative, full of initiative and flexible at the same time. It is also of great importance to have interdisciplinary approaches that will encourage the perception of aesthetic approaches. This is very important if we look at creative thought processes because we have got to look at cultural education as a many faceted approach to deal with other tasks. Otherwise you are going to promote the separation of the approaches. You will have on the one hand the cumulative scientific and technical approach and on the other hand you will have creative inspirational aspects. However, these sort of aspects, the creative and the cultural, have a direct effect on industry and services. The labour market in the cultural field is in full movement. The fields of activity are growing and changing, the cultural industry today is one of the most dynamic growth areas in Europe. This has considerable potential for employment and thus it is important for the universities to not just try and keep up with developments and changes but to actively help shape them. Quality Now let us move on to look at the quality of education and its close linkage with various trends and developments in the European field of education. The growing autonomy of educational establishments is a trend that we can see right across Europe. As a result, we have a quality assurance problem inside education. This is something that enjoys greater or lesser degrees of urgency in the various member states of the European Union. One known indication of the quality of a school is the level of education of the children who attend it. This can show you then whether that education establishment has achieved its task, whether it has passed on the skills and qualifications to the young people that they need and which are of decisive importance for their further life. On the one hand, social, personal and general development is important and we should also carry out an evaluation of this. In both cases, evaluation must be at the service of development. In the field of the universities, we would say that European co-operation has already been introduced. In 1994-1995 there was a pilot project for assessing quality for the European and Austrian universities. For some years, in Austria we had the parallel development of the expansion of university autonomy and quality management. This is why our teachers are working on internal evaluations and the students themselves are evaluating the quality of the teaching that they are experiencing. We move on to look at new horizons. For decades the Iron Curtain divided Europe into two political camps. Now they are starting to grow together and this is an opportunity for education and culture. It is the skills of our young people that will decide the future, skills to cope with the challenges of present and future European integration. Co-operation in the context of community programmes is complementing the bilateral and multilateral contacts that we already have between European Union states and the reformed states. Co-operation with our partners in central and eastern Europe in the field of culture and education should contribute to the construction of a democratic, peaceful and prosperous Europe. This means that we have to back the integrating potential of culture and more particularly of art and education. You cannot over emphasise the importance of culture and education for this European project. Austria will take the opportunity of its presidency and its concurrent chairmanship of the Council of Europe to support the activities that have been initiated in the field of educational co-operation with the reformed states. We will tie them in more tightly to European measures and try and make sure these develop into a common initiative. Polyglot We also want to try and maintain and promote the polyglot aspect of Europe. This is not just the task and goal of the European Union because the Council of Europe also has a foreign language centre and they subscribe this approach. In December 1998 we will have a meeting for the delegates of the European Union's Committee on Education and they will be invited to move on to the concrete approaches in this area. The main task for Austria is to shape the next generation on educational programmes. We will take, of course, as our base the SOCRATES and LEONARDO programmes which have been running since 1995. These have helped create the legal foundation to establish and continue European co-operation in the field of education. It is the objective of Austria's presidency to try and harmonise the different interests of the member states and the Commission and to make sure that we come to a conclusion of the negotiation for the new generation of programmes in plenty of time. The same thing applies to the discussion about the follow on to the programme for co-operation at university level which we have so far been running with central and eastern European countries. Now to convert and apply these topics we want to arrange the following meetings to take place apart from what is happening with the Committee on Education and the Conference of Ministers. Conferences We will have different themed conferences and the first conference is going to take place on the 3rd and 4th of July in Vienna on the topic Developing Vocational Qualifications and Skills. The aim of this conference is to analyse and describe developments in vocational qualification and skills requirements, to look at the strategies for training and curriculum management as well as the application of the fields of occasional training, particularly with initial training and continued or further training. We will also be looking at the effects of information technologies and the European approach to qualification and skills projects in the LEONARDO context; this is linked to an exhibition on present projects. This first themed conference constitutes a more or less direct progression from this impressive conference here in Manchester. However, on the one hand the topic will be expanded as it were to include the development of vocational qualifications and skills moving from initial training all the way through to ongoing and further training. On the other hand of course it also entails a restriction to this very theme. It does however mean that the results of this particular conference will be able to be applied to the area of vocational further training and it means that we will perhaps be able to give some more direct responses to some of the questions raised here. We will then have a second conference on creativity and cultural education. The subject of this conference will be establishing a European educational area that should take account of the European idea of cultural diversity in the context of creative approaches to all questions of the future. Then we want to look at the further development of knowledge with creative skills and we want to develop employability through the acquisition of cultural skills and we have got some very interesting examples which we will talk about. Then we particularly want to look at multilateral approaches, we have got the links here between south east Europe and we have got the development of learning material; we are looking at various other aspects, the curriculum that can be provided and all the levels of general vocation training. What are we going to do with teaching staff? How do we further train them? I would also like to point you to some further developments here. These are things that are being organised by our ministry and again we will be looking at different aspects of training. There is the conference that we are planning on the small and medium-sized enterprises and the growth phase. The most important topic here is going to be the training of entrepreneurs and we have other topics such as financial issues and European networking. So apart from these themed conferences we are going to have the concluding conference for the pilot project of the Commission on the topic of quality on the 20th and 21st November. The Austrian presidency will also be a subject for our schools and we will have a children's competition. I think that by carrying the idea of Europe into the schools we are complying with one of education's most essential tasks. The presidency itself offers an excellent opportunity and shows the opportunities and the responsibilities which each individual member state has to be involved in working for our common Europe.
|
