One in six young persons across Europe is still leaving school with only compulsory education, or even less. Adults with lower education levels are less likely to continue adult education and training than those with high levels of education.
Faced with these facts, earlier this week the European Commission announced a "strategic vision", calling on member states to cooperate more in the field of education and training. While recognising that these areas are the responsibility of national governments, it said that the EU could benefit from stronger cooperation among member states.
The Commission confirmed that education and training in some states are comparable to the best in the world. However, it also said that the poor levels in other states is making certain issues - including reading literacy and early school leaving - a challenge for the EU.
"While the responsibility for education and training lies with national governments, some challenges are common to all EU countries: a workforce that needs more of the right skills for tomorrow's jobs, aging societies and foreign competition. Some goals, for example, helping students and learners move between countries, cannot be achieved by individual countries acting alone. Other goals will be easier to achieve if countries learn from each other and develop common tools, which can then be adapted to meet the specific needs of each country," the Commission said.
Meanwhile, the Commission plans to review the benchmarks set for 2010. Currently, the benchmarks insist on a school-leaving age average rate of no more than 10 per cent, an increase by at least 15 per cent of graduates in maths, science and technology, an 85 per cent rate of 22-year-olds completing upper secondary education, a 50 per cent decrease in the number of low-achieving 15-year-olds in readings, maths and science, and a rise by at least 12.5 per cent of adult workers in lifelong learning.
The Commission also plans to set out new benchmarks in other areas such as tertiary education, employability and mobility of students.
In a separate communication, the European Commission proposed a series of actions, entitled New Skills for New Jobs, aimed at helping member states primarily to match skills with vacancies. Both measures are aimed to help the EU to address the impact of the current economic crisis and global competition.
The series of actions include an improvement of the monitoring of short-term trends used to identify skills which are needed for existing vacancies and for future labour requirements, and the development of tools to better match the skills with the vacancies.
"It makes no sense in these difficult economic times to see unemployment rising but job vacancies are still not being filled," the Commissioners for Employment and Education said in a joint statement.
"Across Europe, technological change, globalisation, the shift to a low-carbon economy, aging populations and the evolution of social structures all mean that both labour markets - and the skills people need - change ever faster. Therefore, we must make sure to anticipate future needs and respond by enable people to develop the right skills," the Commission said.
Other actions involve monitoring medium- and long-term trends through projections of future trends and required skills.
The EU has already anticipated the creation of new jobs in the services sector, raising the ratio of this sector to 75 per cent of the total labour market, as well as an increase in the demand for elementary jobs. It also anticipated that an increasing number of jobs will require medium and high education levels from the working population.