The end of the year is ideal for assessing what has been achieved throughout the year. Statistics, efforts that did not reach their full potential and success stories chalked up during the previous months allow one to look towards the future with the possibility of drawing up new action plans, setting more ambitious targets and reviewing existing benchmarks.

Looking towards European and international frameworks, the Lisbon Agenda is one of these action plans. Set in 2000, the agenda is an EU-wide, 10-year action plan which focuses on education, economic growth and employment. With regards to education, by 2010 the EU aims to reach several targets across a wide spectrum of sectors, such as a lower rate of early school-leavers, an increase in reading skills, and a higher number of adult learners.

Although on a European basis significant progress has been achieved, the EU has warned that member states faced a "serious challenge" in reaching benchmarks and goals to improve the education and training systems by the targeted date.

In an end-of-year review, published earlier this month, the EU said: "Unless significantly greater efforts are made in achieving the benchmarks, early school leaving, completion rates of upper secondary education and key competences for low achievers will remain ambitions for the EU even beyond 2010."

Concern has been raised over the high number of early school-leavers in the EU. It is estimated that one out of six young persons, aged between 18 and 24, leaves school with only a secondary level of education, and does not further any training. With the exception of a number of new member states, Malta faces the plight of the majority of EU countries to lower the rate by the 10 per cent target.

"The high number of early school-leavers is an obstacle to developing a knowledge-based economy and greater social cohesion. There was continuous improvement in recent years in reducing the share of early school leavers, but progress will need to be faster to reach the EU benchmark in 2010."

However, a document published earlier this year entitled Progress Towards the Lisbon Objectives in Education and Training: Indicators and Benchmarks 2007, stated that Malta is progressing at a very fast rate compared with other countries.

With regards to graduates in mathematics, science and technology, the EU has already reached the desirable target of increasing the number by 15 per cent by 2010. However, the number of young people who have completed upper-secondary education is still below the target. While Malta - together with Poland - was considered to be among the countries with the lowest percentage until last year, the EU noted that considerable progress has been registered recently in this area too.

As to adults in lifelong learning, which the EU considers fundamental "not only for the competitiveness, and economic prosperity of the EU, but also for social inclusion, employability, active citizenship and the personal fulfilment of people", further efforts by many EU countries - including Malta - are needed.

Since 2000, further goals have been added: The Lisbon objective of increasing per capita investment in human resources; and the Barcelona objective of ensuring that 90 per cent of all children, aged from three years to the beginning of compulsory schooling, should be enrolled in pre-school, day-care institutions. While Malta reached almost the EU average of public investment, it registered a higher rate than the EU target with respect to children enrolled in pre-school.

The EU is not the only body which has set educational targets to be commonly and collectively reached by its member states. Unesco is working on similar lines to achieve educational targets by roping in help from developed countries to assist those developing.

The targets posed by the international authority are, however, more modest when compared to the EU. While the latter calls for fewer early school-leavers aged between 18 and 24 who leave school with only secondary education, and fewer lower achievers in reading, Unesco calls for global efforts to provide children in developing countries who do not go to school with access to education, and children who already attend school with an adequate learning environment, educational materials and resources, and trained teachers.

In 2000, Unesco launched a 15-year Education For All action plan, also known as the Dakar Declaration, aimed at meeting the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015.

A report of a first experts' meeting on the Education For All plan, published earlier this year, stated that: "School systems the world over are expanding at a rapid pace. However, student performance and learning achievement levels leave much to be desired. Many of those in schools continue to attain only minimal levels of basic generic competencies and have difficulties integrating into the rapidly changing world.

"Human security and prosperity depend on the ability of countries to educate all members of society. Despite encouraging enrolment trends, there are still an estimated 77 million children not attending school and countless others within the school system being denied the right to quality education. In addition, 771 million adults and young people, two-thirds of whom are women and girls, lacks basic literacy skills."

Meanwhile, in a high-level group meeting held last week to discuss the midway improvements and targets, the stakeholders admitted that "we are now in a position to know better what works in basic education, but the current pace of progress is not sufficient to meet the 2015 target".

Among next year's targets are efforts to reach excluded groups, improve education quality and increase the financing of basic education.

One hopes that past experiences, both positive and negative, will serve as an eye-opener to strengthen efforts to reach the educational targets.