UNESCO 21st Century Talks
29 October 2008, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris

Monsieur le Sous-Directeur general,
Excellences,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I very much appreciate your initiative, and its focus on an issue which concerns our entire world – setting our societies on a stable path to peace and prosperity, by ensuring that learning is within the grasp of everyone, and throughout their lives. We need international fora not only in finance, energy and environment. We need to look at communities of peoples and values.

Education unites. And united, we should learn further. I am sure that with more education we could achieve a more human 21st Century. The character of any historical period depends on the quality of education and the maturity of the educators. When there is freedom, the autonomy and vitality of universities is respected. Europe is committed to education, as the Europe of knowledge is our ambition. Therefore knowledge should be at the centre of each strategy, with access and lifelong learning for all as the basis, and quality as the height of the knowledge pyramid.

How to predict what we need to learn for the future? Predicting the future is never easy… We must use our resources wisely. We need to identify and tackle the right challenges and ensure that we are building up the right skills.

The Commission is aiming to do just that, as we approach 2010, when a new phase of the EU Lisbon strategy begins. We will shortly propose a new vision for our cooperation framework with Member States. And we will unveil our “New Skills for New Jobs” initiative; to help us anticipate the skills needed for the jobs of the future.

What do we already know from forecasts? Change will continue to speed by. The nature of work is changing, faster than before. We expect significant numbers of high-skilled jobs to be created in Europe over the next decade or so, and a fall-off in low-skilled ones. As routine jobs die away, and creative tasks grow, people with only basic skills will struggle to find satisfactory jobs.

Policy needs to imagine the future, but to prepare for it today. The future always starts today. That’s why the updated framework on European cooperation for post-2010 period will set four strategic objectives:

Make lifelong learning and mobility a reality, not an exception,

Improve the quality and efficiency of provision and outcomes,

Promote equity and active citizenship,

And a major new challenge: enhance innovation and creativity throughout education and training. Next year 2009 will be declared the European Year of Innovation and Creativity.

In Europe, 6 million young people, 1 in 7 in the 18-24 age range, leave school early with only basic qualifications at best. 1 in 5 of our 15 year-olds struggles with reading, and the figures are getting worse, not better. Just look at the PISA results.

Fewer than 60% of Europeans of student-age attend third-level education, compared to 80% of Americans. The emerging economies are catching up fast –

China already produces twice as many maths, science and technology graduates as Europe.

The answer is we must encourage everybody to learn, wherever they are on their life-course. It’s never too early to learn, and it’s never late to learn. Pre-school and school education lay crucial foundations for every form of learning afterwards. Robert Fulghum got it right: “All we really need to know we learned in kindergarten”. His famous book became a best-seller since 1986.

We must tackle early school leaving. Young people who are left behind at this early stage of their lives have difficulty finding decent work. It is not just a waste for them, but for society: if all early school-leavers completed upper-secondary education, we estimate that total productivity would increase by 1.4%.

We must tackle failures in the first years at university. And we must look at the broader role of higher education. It is about employability and employment, but also culture and citizenship. Universities must certainly continue providing higher education to young people. But they must also open their doors to adult and non-traditional learners. Higher education has a unique role in creating and imparting knowledge. It has to become a solid link in the lifelong learning chain.

Lifelong learning by definition continues beyond the school-gate. For many people, this is where learning takes off. To quote Winston Churchill, another high achiever, “I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.”

Lifelong learning – it is a necessity, not a luxury. In 1996 there was a European Year of Lifelong Learning, and now it has become part of the political landscape. We have a lifelong learning programme, with 7 billion € for 7 years. We have agreed to establish lifelong learning national strategies and a benchmark on adult participation in lifelong learning. People learn while they work, in community life, through their interest in sport or culture. Technicians who improve their skills through involvement in specialised projects, young people absorbing organisation techniques in volunteer work – all this learning should be taken into account.

We recently established the European Qualifications Framework, which classifies qualifications in eight levels based on learning outcomes, no matter how they were acquired. This framework will help us raise the standing of non-formal and informal learning. I am also pleased with the interest it is generating around the world, especially in countries which are building bridges between different levels and forms of education and training.

I am happy that you stress the importance of inclusive lifelong strategies in this session. Education is the cradle for building inclusive communities – it lays the foundations of respect for diversity, of democratic participation, for integrating migrants and including children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

But there is work ahead. Take migration, for example. Many (though not all!) migrant children do less well in school than their native peers. Even more worryingly, in some countries, children of migrant background do less well at school than their parents did.

Therefore I published a Green paper in July to open a debate on how we can integrate migrants through education, both in Member States and through European action.

The role of teachers is fundamental: if the teacher is a lifelong learner, s/he is the best example for pupils. The quality of teachers’ initial and in-service training is crucial.

We should aim at an ‘optimal skills mix’: meeting specific, technical skill needs, but also developing the ‘learning to learn’ aptitudes – such as creativity, problem-solving, analytical and entrepreneurial skills.

There is a third dimension to skills – the skills that people need for living with growing diversity. Mobility and migration are part of our world. So it is important that everyone living in Europe feels equipped for dealing with diversity – the reason we nominated 2008 as the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.

Partnerships and mobility are essential. Vocational education and training (VET) and business are old allies. But even friends need to talk… Fortunately, there is a growing sense that partnerships and better communication with the social partners is the best way of assuring that VET providers are in tune with labour market needs.

We also need an open, flexible and dynamic dialogue in higher education. This is why I have launched the University-Business Forum, as a platform for discussion, for exchange of good practice and for mutual learning. This Forum is a very practical way to support change as universities open up to partnership with business and respond to the wider needs of society.

Mutual learning is also the core of our mobility exchanges – where the Erasmus programme is our best-known, and best-loved, activity. Last year we celebrated 20 years of the programme. Thanks to Erasmus, almost 2 million young Europeans have been able to undertake part of their studies abroad.

All our research points to one conclusion – learning mobility is good for the people who take part; it is good for the institutions involved – it opens them to new influences; and it is good for Europe – it breaks down barriers between people, and opens hearts and minds…

One interesting demonstration is that 1 in every 6 Erasmus students finds a long-term partner abroad…

We can go further, however. I want to give a major boost to mobility in Europe. I commissioned a High Level Expert Forum under the leadership of Maria Joao Rodrigues. They have delivered an ambitious blueprint to expand mobility opportunities: so that learning mobility becomes the norm and no longer the exception; backed not just by European programmes but by Member State and regional support, and by business, foundations and civil society.

Let me congratulate the French EU Presidency for seizing enthusiastically on this agenda – and their focus on mobility for all, including apprentices and volunteers outside formal education. I hope that we can build in an ambitious way on the recommendations of the Forum. The times may not be the best for creating new, expanded funding mechanisms. Nevertheless, I am struck by the strong political interest in expanding learning mobility. I am convinced that we can strengthen European education greatly if we do so.

I want to finish by talking about Europe’s place in the world, and our international cooperation in education and training. As recent events underline, all our futures are inextricably linked. But through our policies, and our programmes such as Erasmus Mundus and Tempus, we aim to make a positive force of this in education and training.

The key issues – mobility of teachers and students; the recognition of qualifications; quality and excellence – concern us all. Whether we work through academic exchanges, policy dialogue, or technical assistance, we have one overarching goal – through the people–to–people contacts that underpin education cooperation, to contribute to a more peaceful, more prosperous world.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Europe should become more and more people-friendly. If we want to achieve lifelong learning for all, we have no choice. We must face the challenge right now. As Goethe said, what is not started today is never finished tomorrow…

The best factor for success is openness: open-mindedness and open-heartedness. Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all, in Aristotle’s words. Comenius said that school should be a factory of humanity. Education will help us to find answers and solutions for a better world.

Thank you.