There can be do doubt that education and training, in addition to their fundamental task of promoting the development of the individual and the values of citizenship, have a key role to play in stimulating growth and restoring competitiveness and a socially acceptable level of employment in the Community. However, it is essential to grasp the nature, extent and limits of this role. Given the economic and social problems they are facing today, which are cyclical in certain cases and essentially and more profoundly structural in others, our societies are making many pressing and sometimes contradictory demands on education and training systems. Education and training are expected to solve the problems of the competitiveness of businesses, the employment crisis and the tragedy of social exclusion and marginality - in a word, they are expected to help society to overcome its present difficulties and to control the profound changes which it is currently undergoing.
Certain of these demands and expectations are fully justified. Moreover, all other things being equal, it is the countries with the highest levels of general education and training (for example Germany or Japan) which are the least affected by the problems of competitiveness and employment. However, education and training should not be seen as the sole solution to the most urgent questions. It is only within certain limits, and in combination with measures in other areas (industrial and trade policies, research policy etc.) that they can help to solve immediate problems. There is no doubt that they could play a significant part in the emergence of a new development model in the Community in the coming years. However, European systems of education and training will be able to do this only if they are suited to the task. Indeed, it is the place of education and training in the fabric of society and their links with all economic and social activity which must be reexamined. In a society based far more on the production, transfer and sharing of knowledge than on trade in goods, access to theoretical and practical knowledge must necessarily play a major role.
These adaptation measures will inevitably have to be implemented progressively, and their effects will be felt only with the passing of time. Nevertheless, by the extension of a certain number of steps taken by the Member States and the Community in recent years, well-planned education and training measures should still produce positive results in three areas: combating unemployment by skilling young people and reskilling staff freed up by rises in productivity as a result of technological progress; boosting growth by strengthening the competitiveness of businesses; developing a form of growth which produces more employment by improved matching of general and specific skills to changes on the markets and to social needs. In order to determine with accuracy the shape and content of the measures needed, it is essential to diagnose the current state of education and training in the Community.
The contributions of the Member States highlight the dual role played by the system of vocational training:
As far as labour market policies are concerned, the contributions of the Member States all point to the need to promote continuing training in various forms (sandwich and supplementary training, systems of rotation and training leave); several Member States believe that priority should be given to preventive measures for low-skilled people whose jobs are more likely to be under threat and to measures for integrating the unemployed and young people into the labour market.
The Member States agree on the need for greater involvement of the private sector in education and/or vocational training systems and in drawing up education and training policies in order to take account of market needs and local conditions. This could be done, for example, by encouraging businesses to become involved in education and training systems and to integrate continuing training into their strategic plans.
The following suggestions have been made for specific improvements to training systems:
Under the Treaty on European Union, the Community is to concentrate on promoting cooperation between Member States and on supporting national strategies for improving the results and quality of training, establishing an open education area in the Community by greater recognition of qualifications, and developing Community programmes for giving a European dimension to training.
The most important thing to remember is that the situation differs greatly from one Member State to another. In some of them, the standard of basic education is satisfactory while the quality of vocational training is inadequate; in others, it is the continuing training element which is weak and the basic training which is strong; then again, continuing training may be well organised but initial training deficient.
A diagnosis of the current situation in the Community in this area provides a mixed picture of weaknesses and a certain number of strengths.
(a) Weaknesses
The major weaknesses of the education and training systems can be found in the most frequently voiced criticisms by industry, parents, social analysts etc. The first is the relatively low level of training in the Community, and especially the fact that too many young people leave school without essential basic training. In the Community, the proportion of people of normal school-leaving age who leave the education system with a secondary qualification is 42%, against 75% in the United States of America and 90% in Japan. The proportion of young people in any age bracket who are in higher education in the Community is, on average, 30%, as compared to 70% in the United States of America and 50% in Japan.
There is a direct connection between this problem and the problem of the failure of education, which is a particularly important and increasingly widespread factor of marginalisation and economic and social exclusion. In the Community, 25-30% of young people, who are the victims of failure, leave the education system without the preparation they need to become properly integrated into working life. Many of them join the ranks of the young long-term unemployed.
As shown by the initially surprising combination of a high rate of unemployment and a lack of skills in various areas the second area of weakness is the persistently inadequate development of systems and types of continuing training, the inequality of access to this kind of training, the limited possibilities in this area for people employed in SMEs etc. These weaknesses have produced the second substantial group of unemployed people against a background of ever increasing strides in knowledge and an ever shorter life for technologies and types of work organisation.
While the problem of the suitability of skills concerns primarily low- and intermediate-level skills, there is also a real lack of skills in a number of areas related to the applications of science and technology and the interaction between them and society: information technologies; applications of biotechnologies; applications of regulations on the environment; combinations of technical and management skills, etc.
With a university system faced - as it has been since the beginning of the 70s - with the challenge of absorbing a growing number of students while maintaining the quality of its teaching, and the marginalisation of - and increasing disaffection with - vocational education, the most developed systems of education and training in the Member States of the Community are, to put it another way, becoming subject to ever increasing constraints. They are weighed down by a combination of new expectations (improving the level of initial training and the ability of individuals to adapt to occupational and social changes throughout their lives) and old tasks (socialising people and imparting to them the basic values of citizenship).
In addition to these features, which are present in varying but significant degrees in all Member States of the Community, there are a number of weaknesses at the specifically European level: the lack of a genuine European market in skills and occupations; the lack of mutual transparency and the limited recognition of qualifications and skills at Community level; the lack of a genuine European area for open and distance learning.
(b) Positive aspects
Nevertheless, there are also positive points and encouraging developments.
Accordingly, in recent years there have been a number of important qualitative and quantitative steps forward in most Member States: a general improvement in the population's level of training; an increase in the level of school enrolment; the recovery or development of investment in education; an increase in the number of teaching staff etc. Reforms of university systems and education policies and structures - some of them major - have been devised and implemented, the effects of which should be felt throughout the 90s: growing involvement of the private sector; decentralisation of the management of education systems; an increase in local and regional initiatives.
These measures have been accompanied by changes in attitudes which have led to a rapprochement (not always without its risks) between education systems and industry, with the representatives of education systems showing increasing awareness of the need to provide training which prepares students for the world of work, and the representatives of industry realising the importance of general education, in addition to purely vocational knowledge, given the development of new forms of work organization and the decentralization of responsibilities.
The Member States and the Community should now adapt the European system of education and training by building on the measures referred to above and continuing and bolstering the efforts already made.
(a) General objectives and broad lines
The fundamental principle of the various types of measures to be taken should be to develop human resources throughout people's working lives, starting with basic education and working through initial training to continuing training. By giving general currency to best practice in the various Member States at these different stages, we will succeed in developing an education and training system of the quality we are seeking.
In order to combat unemployment among young people with no skills, the objective should be to develop systems and formulas which provide sound adequate basic training and establish the link between school education and working life. The basic skills which are essential for integration into society and working life include a mastery of basic knowledge (linguistic, scientific and other knowledge) and skills of a technological and social nature, that is to say the ability to develop and act in a complex and highly technological environment, characterised, in particular, by the importance of information technologies; the ability to communicate, make contacts and organise etc. These skills include, in particular, the fundamental ability to acquire new knowledge and new skills - "to learn how to learn" throughout one's life. People's careers will develop on the basis of the progressive extension of skills.
In order to ensure a smoother and more effective transition from education to working life, formulas of apprenticeship and in-service training in businesses which allow people to gain skills in the world of work should be developed and systematized. Alongside the normal apprenticeship schemes, considerable effort should be devoted to developing initial vocational training in special training centres as a possible alternative to university. Shorter and more practically oriented forms of training should be encouraged, but students should still be provided with enough general knowledge to ensure a sufficient degree of adaptability and to avoid excessive specialization.
In their efforts to devise and implement education and training measures which are able to stimulate growth and employment, the Community and the Member States must also take account of the fact that 80% of the European labour force of the year 2000 is already on the labour market. All measures must therefore necessarily be based on the concept of developing, generalizing and systematising lifelong learning and continuing training. This means that education and training systems must be rethought in order to take account of the need - which is already growing and is set to grow even more in the future - for the permanent recomposition and redevelopment of knowledge and know-how. The establishment of more flexible and more open systems of training and the development of individuals' ability to adapt will become increasingly important, both for businesses, so that they can make better use of the technological innovations they develop or acquire, and for individuals, a considerable proportion of whom may well have to change their line of work four or five times during their lives.
Education and training systems will have an important role to play in this process of adaptation. There is an evident shortage in the Community of certain highly skilled technical personnel, such as people who are capable of maintaining flexible manufacturing systems or handling systems for monitoring emissions of pollutants in firms. In many high-tech disciplines, Europe cannot yet call on the requisite manpower to do top-level research. This problem can be overcome by a joint effort on the part of specialised training and higher education establishments. Cooperation between universities and the business world is another basic way of transmitting knowledge, a vector for innovation and a way of increasing productivity in developing and potentially job-creating sectors.
Universities must also be given the resources they need to play their particular role in developing lifelong learning and continuing training. In association with public and private partners at national and regional level, they can promote lifelong education, for example by measures for training instructors, reskilling primary and secondary school teachers, retraining middle and senior management, etc.
In order for these measures to be as effective as possible, it is necessary to anticipate skills needs correctly and in good time by identifying the developing areas and the new economic and social functions to be fulfilled, as well as the skills required for them. Even if real-time adjustment is not possible (since a certain period of adaptation is inevitable), the organisation of as much research as is necessary in this area and the introduction of observation instruments and of mechanisms for transferring the information collected to the education system should make it possible to minimise the gap between required and available skills.
In order to ensure the success of this process of adapting the system of education and training and to implement the measures set out above, it will not just be a question of increasing the level of public funding assigned to this area nor will the same increase be appropriate in all cases. The task is rather to reorganise educational resources in association with the employment services.
Generally speaking, the private sector, and businesses in particular, should become more involved in the work of vocational training systems. In order to facilitate this process, appropriate incentives (of a fiscal and legal nature) should be developed. The training dimension should be integrated into the strategic plans of businesses. Provision should also be made for a significant proportion of the funding allocated for the compensation of the unemployed to be reallocated for training measures. In order to ensure optimum overall use of funding, it is essential to improve the coordination between public and private training opportunities.
The public authorities, apart from their role of providing incentives and setting the general framework for the measures, would be responsible for setting guidelines and giving clear instructions on the objectives to be achieved at the various levels.
Moreover, the systems of education and, above all, vocational training, have developed over the past two decades against the background of life dominated by work. Given the steady rises in productivity and the concern to distribute work more equitably - but at a rate and in a manner which are not yet known, there will probably be a further reduction of working time and a readjustment of the balance between working time and training time. New possibilities are emerging for linking new patterns of working time with the development of training; these possibilities should be explored and exploited. Experiments in this area, based notably on agreements between the various parties in businesses, should be multiplied, assessed and, where appropriate, generalized.
(b) Specific means
By concerted action at European level, possibly even in a Community framework and with the aid of Community instruments, Member States should use the instruments which they control in an effort to achieve the goals set out above. A key aspect should be the development of genuine "training policies" with the involvement of the public authorities, businesses and the social partners. In order to ensure sufficient transparency at European level and to make it possible for Member States to draw on the experience gained in other Member States and to adapt their measures to those conducted elsewhere, the policies and strategies implemented should lead to the regular publication and large-scale distribution of documents setting out objectives and providing descriptions and assessments.
Particular attention should be paid to the continuing training of staff in SMEs, which account for a significant proportion of businesses in the Community and represent a potential for innovation which is by no means negligible. There can be no doubt that regional and local authorities have a particular role to play in this area by setting up mechanisms for promoting local forms of partnership in the area of continuing training and the reskilling of workers.
The fiscal instruments available to Member States (the lowering of social contributions for businesses which organise training measures etc.) should also be used, since they place fewer restrictions on public budgets than does direct funding. Systems of compensation for unemployment should be modified and formulas developed for reallocating part of this funding for training measures, in particular for the long-term unemployed and for young people entering the labour market without skills.
It is important to set up generalised and versatile systems of "training credits" ("training vouchers") - which all young people would receive and could spend relatively freely throughout their working lives in order to obtain new knowledge and to update their skills. Such systems already exist in certain Member States, but are limited in their scope and target population. Formulas which are more ambitious and of broader scope should be examined and developed on the basis of the models which are best adapted to the various national cultures: statutory entitlement to "training leave" with financial assistance from the State; incorporation of the right to training in collective agreements, etc. In this context, possible ways of linking these formulas with measures for increasing flexibility in the conditions applicable to employment and for sharing working time should be studied and tested.
On the basis of a partnership between universities, public authorities and businesses, systems of initial and continuing training should be set up in the areas corresponding to the technological and social skills required for developing functions and occupations (multidisciplinary types of training; training for work in an environment which makes intensive use of information technologies; compound, technical and management skills, etc.). One pivotal aspect should be the development of training by the new technologies, more particularly information technologies, with a view to enhancing the quality and diversity of basic education and training and introducing modular and interactive elements.
By extending and emulating the measures implemented in certain Member States, the countries of the Community should also adopt the provisions needed to increase the flexibility of the various parts of education systems and the level of decentralization of management of education systems: within certain limits, and account being taken of the risks of increasing inequalities in education and eroding its humanist and cultural vocation, it is also desirable to give greater choice to students and to stimulate competition between establishments of higher education.
The Community could and should take a certain number of specific steps to support and complement all these measures. These steps can be bracketed together in three main groups.
In an extension of existing programmes and regulations, and against the backdrop of the implementation of the guidelines for future education and training programmes, the first objective should be to develop still further the European dimension of education: to improve the quality of training and to foster innovation in education by increasing exchanges of experience and information on good practices and developing joint projects; to establish a genuine European area of - and market in - skills and training by increasing the transparency, and improving the mutual recognition, of qualifications and skills; to promote European-level mobility among teachers, students and other people undergoing training, that is to say physical mobility and the "virtual" mobility made possible by the new technologies of communication; to develop common databases and knowledge on skills needs; to conduct comparative research on methodologies used and policies implemented; to improve the interoperability of systems of distance learning and to increase the level of standardisation of the new decentralized multi-media training tools, etc.
In association with the measures taken at Community level in the areas of social and employment policy, and in concert with the Member States, the Community should set in place a political framework for the medium and long-term measures for linking the systems of continuing training and training credits with measures for increasing flexibility and reducing working time.
Generally speaking, the Community should set firmly and clearly the essential requirements and the long-term objectives for measures and policies in this area in order to make it easier to develop a new model for growth, competitiveness and employment in which education and training play a key role and to ensure essential equality of opportunity and the coherent development of the three dimensions of the European system of education and training (education, training and culture). One way of sending an important signal and creating added awareness in this area would be to announce and organise a "European Year of Education" (perhaps in 1995).