EUROPE: Parliament calls for more lifelong learning opportunities

People should be encouraged to learn throughout their lives by governments increasing and improving opportunities for mature students, widening the recognition of qualifications gained later in life and stepping up investment and monitoring in the sector, says the European Parliament. But some governments are fiercely protective of their authority in this sector and argue that adult education would be better done nationally than at a European level.

After a debate which largely steered clear of specifics, the parliament formally backed a European Commission action plan for adult learning earlier this month which largely assigns the responsibility for implementing changes to member governments – and at least partly links the adult learning process to the EU’s Lisbon strategy for promoting competitiveness.

Ján Figel, the European Education Commissioner, told the parliament: “We need to invest in education at all stages of life and at all levels, and the skills and competences of adults need to be continuously upgraded.”

Figel said demographic changes meant that people needed to work at least some years longer and they needed to maintain the relevance of their skills to do this. Adult learning helped to combat social exclusion – too many adults with low education levels risked being excluded from the labour market, the commissioner said.

He pledged that the commission would encourage member states to set targets for increasing the skill levels of adults and to speed up the process of assessing and recognising non-formal and informal learning for groups at risk. The commission would propose a set of core data to improve monitoring, Figel said.

Many of the parliament’s members agreed and said the encouragement of adult learning at EU level would be welcomed in their own countries. But Thomas Wise, of the UK Independence Party, said the UK was “fine when it comes to lifelong learning… and did not need to accept any more interference from this place in education, which is still a national competence.”