Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12
February 2001 on European Cooperation in Quality Evaluation in School Education
(2001/166/EC)
Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the
Council
of 12 February 2001 on European Cooperation in Quality Evaluation in School Education
(2001/166/EC)
THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in
particular Article 149 (4) and Article 150 (4) thereof,
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission,
Having regard to the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee,
Having regard to the opinion of the Committee of the Regions,
Acting in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 251 of the Treaty,
Whereas:
There is a need to promote a European dimension in education as it is an
essential objective in building a people's Europe.
Quality education is one of the principal objectives of primary and
secondary education, including vocational education, for all Member States in
the context of the learning society.
The quality of school education must be assured at all levels and in all
areas of education, regardless of any differences in educational objectives,
methods and needs, and regardless of school excellence rankings where they
exist.
The resources devoted to education have increased in all industrialised
countries during the last decades. Education is seen not only as a personal
enrichment but also as a contribution towards social cohesion, social inclusion
and the solution to problems of employment. Lifelong learning is an important
means of controlling one's future on a professional and personal level. Quality
education is essential in the light of labour market policies, the free movement
of workers within the Community and the recognition of diplomas and teaching
qualifications.
It is the responsibility of the Member States to ensure, when they have the
possibility, that school syllabuses take account of developments in society.
Member States should help the educational establishments to meet the
educational and social requirements in the new millennium and to keep pace with
the developments arising from them. Member States should therefore support the
educational establishments in order to improve the quality of the services they
provide by helping them to develop new initiatives geared to ensure the quality
of teaching and by helping them to encourage both the movement of persons
between countries and the transfer of knowledge.
In the area of labour market policies, the Council adopts each year a set of
employment guidelines building on quantitative targets and indicators. Guideline
7 of the employment guidelines for 2000, set out in the Annex to
Decision/2000/228/EC(4), states that Member States will "improve the
quality of their school systems in order to reduce substantially the number of
young people who drop out of the school system early. Particular attention
should also be given to young people with learning difficulties".
In guideline 8 of the said guidelines, specific reference is made to
developing computer literacy, to equipping schools with computer equipment and
to facilitating student access to the Internet by the end of 2002, which should
have a positive impact on the quality of education and prepare young people for
the digital age.
The promotion of mobility enshrined as an objective of the Community in
Articles 149 and 150 of the Treaty should be encouraged by quality education.
European cooperation and transnational exchanges of experiences will
contribute to identifying and disseminating effective and acceptable methods of
evaluating quality.
Systems designed to ensure quality must remain flexible and be adaptable to
the new situation created by changes in the structure and objectives of
educational establishments, taking into account the cultural dimension of
education.
Systems to ensure quality vary from one Member State and one educational
establishment to another, given the diversity in the sizes, structures,
financial circumstances, institutional character and educational approach of
different establishments.
Quality evaluation and school self-evaluation in particular are tools well
suited to the aim of combating the number of young people who drop out of the
school system early and social exclusion in general.
In order to achieve the objective of quality education, a whole range of
means are available. Quality evaluation is one of them and is a valuable
contribution to securing and developing the quality of education within general
and vocational schools. The quality evaluation of education must seek, inter
alia, to assess the capacity of schools to take account of the use of the new
information technologies which are becoming more widespread.
The networking at European level of institutions involved in quality
evaluation in school education is of fundamental importance. Existing networks
such as the European network of policy makers for the evaluation of education
systems set up by the Member States in 1995 can provide invaluable aid to the
implementation of this recommendation.
The Commission conducted a pilot project on quality evaluation in higher
education in 1994 and 1995. Council Recommendation 98/561/EC of 24 September
1998 on European cooperation in quality assurance in higher education
underlines the importance of the exchange of information and experiences and
cooperation regarding quality assurance between other Member States.
The Socrates programme, in particular Action 6.1., invites the
Commission to promote the exchange of information and experience on questions of
common interest. Evaluating quality in school education is one of the priority
themes of the said Action.
The Commission has, since March 1996, launched various studies and
operational activities to examine the question of evaluation from different
perspectives with the aim of describing the wide variety and wealth of
approaches and education evaluation methodologies used at different levels.
The Commission conducted a pilot project during the academic year 1997/1998
in 101 upper and lower secondary schools in the countries participating in the
Socrates programme, which raised awareness of quality issues and helped to
improve the quality of education in those schools. The final report, June 1999,
entitled "Evaluation quality in school education, A European pilot
project" emphasises a range of methodological elements as important
elements for successful self-evaluation.
In its conclusions of 16 December 1997, the Council stated that
evaluation is also an important element for assuring and, where appropriate,
improving quality.
The Council Presidency declared in its conclusions at the Extraordinary
European Council held in Lisbon on 23 and 24 March 2000 that European education
and training systems must adapt both to the needs of the information society and
to the need to raise levels of employment and improve its quality.
With a view to the enlargement of the Union, the accession countries should
be involved in European cooperation in the field of quality evaluation.
It is necessary to take account of the principle of subsidiarity and Member
States' exclusive responsibilities for the organisation and structure of their
education systems, so that the particular cultural character and educational
traditions of each State can flourish.
I. RECOMMEND THAT MEMBER STATES:
within their specific economic, social and cultural context while taking due
account of the European dimension, support the improvement of quality evaluation
in school education, by:
supporting and, where appropriate, establishing transparent quality
evaluation systems with the following aims:
to secure quality education, whilst promoting social inclusion, and equal
opportunities for girls and boys,
to safeguard quality of school education as a basis for lifelong learning,
to encourage school self-evaluation as a method of creating learning and
improving schools, within a balanced framework of school self-evaluation and any
external evaluations,
to use techniques aimed at improving quality as a means of adapting more
successfully to the requirements of a world in rapid and constant change,
to clarify the purpose and the conditions for school self-evaluation, and to
ensure that the approach to self-evaluation is consistent with other forms of
regulation,
to develop external evaluation in order to provide methodological support
for school self-evaluation and to provide an outside view of the school
encouraging a process of continuous improvement and taking care that this is not
restricted to purely administrative checks;
encouraging and supporting, where appropriate, the involvement of school
stakeholders, including teachers, pupils, management, parents and experts, in
the process of external and self-evaluation in schools in order to promote
shared responsibility for the improvement of schools;
supporting training in the management and the use of self-evaluation
instruments with the following aims:
to make school self-evaluation function effectively as an instrument
strengthening the capacity of schools to improve,
to ensure an efficient dissemination of examples of good practice and new
instruments within self-evaluation;
supporting the capacity of schools to learn from one another nationally and
on a European scale, with the following aims:
to identify and to disseminate good practice and efficient tools such as
indicators and benchmarks in the field of quality evaluation in school
education,
to form networks between schools, at all appropriate levels, to support each
other and provide outside impetus to the evaluation process;
encouraging cooperation between all the authorities involved in quality
evaluation in school education and promoting their European networking. This cooperation could cover some of the following areas:
the exchange of information and experience, in particular on methodological
developments and examples of good practice, especially by using modern
information and communication technologies, and, when appropriate, by organising
European conferences, seminars and workshops,
the collection of data and the development of tools such as indicators and
benchmarks of particular relevance for quality evaluation in schools,
publication of results of school evaluation in accordance with the relevant
policies of each Member State and its educational establishments, to be made
available to authorities in the Member States,
promoting contacts between experts in order to build European expertise in
the area,
making use of the results of international surveys for the development of
quality evaluation in schools.
II. INVITE THE COMMISSION:
to encourage, in close cooperation with the Member States, and on the basis
of existing Community programmes, the cooperation referred to in points 4 and 5
of Section I, also involving relevant organisations and associations with the
necessary experience in this field.
In doing this, the Commission should ensure that full benefit is drawn from the
expertise of the Eurydice network referred to in Action 6.1. of the Socrates
programme;
to establish, on the basis of the existing Community programmes, a database
for the dissemination of effective tools and instruments of school quality
evaluation. The database should also contain examples of good practice and be
accessible on the Internet; interactive use thereof should be ensured;
to make use of the resources within existing Community programmes, to
incorporate the experience already gained into these programmes and to develop
the existing networks;
to make, as a first step, an inventory of the instruments and strategies for
quality evaluation in primary and secondary education already in use in the
various Member States. When the inventory has been compiled, the Commission will
work with the Member States on appropriate follow-up. The European Parliament,
the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions
should be fully informed on a regular basis of the follow-up;
to present on the basis of contributions from the Member States triennial
detailed reports to the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and
Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions in relation to the
implementation of this Recommendation;
to draw conclusions and make proposals on the basis of these reports.
Done at Brussels, 12 February 2001.
For the European Parliament
The President
N. Fontaine
