LISBON OBJECTIVES: EDUCATION AND TRAINING
(6672/07)
Letter from the Chairman to Bill Rammell
MP, Minister for Life-long Learning, Further and Higher Education,
Department for Education and Skills
Your Explanatory Memorandum on the above Communication
was considered by Sub-Committee G (Social Policy and Consumer
Affairs) at its meeting of 19 April 2007.
We share the Government's view that, before
adopting Council Conclusions, there is a need for more detail
to be provided on what is envisgaged by the eleven new core indicators.
It is not clear to us, for example, what the core indicator "civic
skils" is seeking to measure. We would therefore appreciate
clearer definitions of the core indicators. We are not convinced
either that there is a need for so many core indicators and we
would welcome your views on this.
We believe too that the Government is right
to express its concern about the proposal to devote at least 2%
of GDP to a modernised higher education sector by 2015. This has
important budgetary implications for Member State at the national
level and as such may be considered to fall outside the remit
of this policy initiative.
You allude in your EM to the need to minimise
burdens on schools arising from new data collections, particularly
in the areas of modern languages and learning-to-learn. We share
your concerns and consider it extremely important to ensure a
balance between the value of the data collected and the costs
involved in both time and budgetary terms. In this context, we
would be interested to receive from you some information on the
development of the European Indicator of Language Competence,
to which the Commission refers in Section 3.2 of its Communication.
Finally, we have a broader concern as to how
appropriate it is for the European Union to be setting a framework
of indicators and we would welcome your views on this question
as well.
We will maintain the Communication under scrutiny
pending further details from you, in advance of the Education
Council on 25 May 2007, on the proposed indicators, on the European
Indicator of Lanaguage Competence and on the appropriateness of
this initiative.
24 April 2007
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