Education & Training

Introduction

The EU is not directly responsible for education and training policies - each Member State retains its responsibility for the content and organisation of its education and training systems.

However, the EU does have a number of funding programmes dedicated to promoting education and training across the EU. The main EU programmes in the areas of education and training are:

• Lifelong Learning Programme, to support actions in the following areas:
  • Comenius (school education)
  • Erasmus (higher education)
  • Grundtvig (adult education)
  • Leonardo da Vinci (vocational training)
  • Jean Monnet (academic posts for European Studies)
• Tempus (modernising higher education outside the EU)
• EU-Canada
• EU-USA

The EU acts as a platform for comparisons of education systems, and offers opportunities for benchmarking and exchange of best practice.

Another key consideration for the EU is the mutual recognition of academic, vocational and professional qualifications across the EU, in order to make it easier for EU citizens to work in another country. For the same reason, a standard format for a European CV has been adopted.

The main areas of EU education and training policy

There are a number of key aspects of education and training policy which are dealt with by the EU. These include:

• Life-long learning
• New technologies
• Learning abroad/ exchanges
• Languages

For more information, you can visit the European Commission’s education and training website. Click here

For a Brussels Office briefing on the Lifelong Learning Programme, click here.

Calls are published annually, usually around October time, with deadlines falling around late January to late March.

Youth

The key element of the EU’s youth policy is the Youth in Action programme, which runs for the years 2007-2013. With a budget of 880 million euros, the programme has the following priorities:

• To promote young people’s active citizenship
• To develop solidarity among young people
• To foster mutual understanding between young people in different countries
• To contribute to developing the quality of support systems for youth activities
• To promote European cooperation in the youth field

A Brussels Office briefing on the programme is available here.

For further information and to download the complete Programme Guide, visit the European Commission’s youth website. Click here