Education and the European Union: towards a common education policy in Europe?

Education and the European Union: towards a common education policy in Europe? Roger Dale University of Bristol

Outline of the argument • ‘European Education policy’ should really be an oxymoron, but it isn’t • It is fundamentally shaped by: • changing conceptions of ‘Europe’ and the role and scope of the EU—broadly, from mutual security (through) a ‘common market’ and developing Europe’s cultural heritage, to Europe as an ‘economy’, with ‘needs and expectations different from the sum of its Member States’ economies—and the roles of ‘education’ in these • Since 2000 (Lisbon agenda) education has be seen as having a crucial role in supporting Europe’s competitiveness, knowledge base and social cohesion • Relatively independent of this, education’s role in building ‘Europe’ as a political and cultural entity • And, very importantly, by the EU’s limited discretion in matters of education, where the means of ‘getting around’ this problem themselves strongly shape the possible policy interventions

Key points to note/anticipated conclusions • It is less helpful in trying to determine the nature and effect of European education policy to expect to find those effects exclusively in changes to domestic education policies; ‘Building Europe’ is a key end in itself, to which education is to make a key contribution • The ‘EU’ in this context is far from homogeneous or monolithic. There are differences between the Council (politicians) and Commission (civil service), with the latter more prominent in building Europe, and between different Directorates (‘Ministries’), with the financial and economic directorates much more powerful than Education, for instance • It is misleading to see the EU/MS relationship in education in zero sum terms • Examining this relationship involves rethinking a number of categories that we tend to take for granted for instance, the education sector; European education policy is not a ‘scaled up’ version of national education policies, but something quite different

(Meta-)theoretical Approach: Distinction between ‘Problem-Solving’ and ‘Critical’ theory (Cox) • Most work on EU education policy tends to be problem-solving rather than critical • "The general aim of PS is to make [social and power] relationships and institutions [into which they are organized] work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble.. • (CT) ‘calls these relationships into question by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing..(it addresses) the very framework for action . . . which problem-solving theory accepts as its parameters" (Cox, 1996:88-9).

‘Effects on…’ A typical approach is to ask what are the ‘effects of’ EU policy on national/domestic policies--which assumes the kinds of things that CT requires to be problematised: • a level of correspondence/equivalence between regional and national education policies • a homogenisation of the roles, scope and place of education policy • a hierarchical relationship between EU and national levels • methodological nationalist and statist assumptions • more specifically, that the Lisbon agenda and the OMC both have relatively fixed meanings and that they jointly constitute and comprise the agenda of European Education Policy • That the relationship is confined to ‘effects on’

The Contexts of European Education Policy (from Dale 2007) • changes in the wider political economic context (‘neo-liberal globalisation’); • Associated changes in the governance of education—New Public Management, the political face of neoliberalism • changes in the ‘architecture of education systems’, including their relationships with capitalism and modernity, and their relationship to each other; • changes in the ‘capacity’ (conceptions of what is feasible) and the ‘mandate’ (conceptions of what is desirable) of education systems; • and changes in the appraisal of the contribution of education systems to the demands created by these changes in context.

The EU and education; the formal position • Education –apart from Vocational and Technical Education—is subject to ‘subsidiarity’, meaning that it is a Member State responsibility and the EU cannot intervene in it. • However, Article 149.1 of the Treaty states that ‘The Community shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their actions, while fully respecting the responsibility of Member States for the content of teaching and the organization of education systems and their linguistic and cultural diversity’. (Article 149.1)

Community Actions in Education • The actions of the Community in the field of education should according to the Treaty aim at: • ‘developing the European dimension in education • encouraging the mobility of students and teachers • promoting co-operation between educational establishments • exchange of information an experiences • encouraging the development of distance education’ (Article 149.2) • Furthermore, the Community “shall foster co-operation with third countries…in the field of education” (Article 149.3)

The Open Method of Coordination as the means by which the education objectives were to be met As stated in the Bulletin on the Conclusions of the Portuguese Presidency, ‘the open method of coordination, which is designed to help the Member States to progressively develop their own policies, involves: • fixing guidelines for the Union combined with specific timetables for achieving the goals which they set in the short, medium and long terms; • establishing, where appropriate, quantitative and qualitative indicators and benchmarks against the best in the world and tailored to the needs of different Member States and sectors as a means of comparing best practice; • translating these European guidelines into national and regional policies by setting specific targets and adopting measures, taking into account national and regional differences; • periodic monitoring, evaluation and peer review as mutual learning processes. (emphases added). (European Presidency 2000, para 37)

European Education Space • European Education Space can be seen as an opportunity structure framed • formally by Treaty responsibilities, • substantively by the Lisbon agenda and the European Social Model; the EES as framed by Lisbon is concerned with Education only in so far as it may be seen as related to those purposes and implications • and historically by the ‘pre-Lisbon’ education activities of the European Commission • EU has no discretion over the areas that dominate national education politics and policies in most MS • Consequence?: pressure to create parallel system/sector?

European Education Policy • Driven by the EU’s ‘hegemonic projects’, in a context where the ways that education can bring about change are fundamentally framed and limited by the nature of the EES • HPs include three very broad and basic elements, each with an explicit relevance for education; • economic competitiveness, • developing a European Social Model, • and enhancing ‘Europe’s’ claims to be a distinct and significant political/economic/cultural entity • Overall programme of KnELL-Knowledge Economy and Lifelong Learning--?? Parallel sector?

Methodological Preamble: the ‘isms’ • ‘ism’ is used to suggest an approach to objects that takes them as unproblematic and assumes a constant and shared meaning; they become ‘fixed, abstract and absolute’ (Fine, 465) • Methodological Nationalism • Methodological Statism • Methodological Educationism—the tendency to regard ‘education’ as a single category for purposes of analysis, with an unproblematically accepted scope, and a set of implicitly shared knowledges, practices and assumptions.

Methodological Educationism • Treats ‘Education’ as abstract, fixed, absolute, a-historical and universal • Equates ‘Education’ with schooling • Takes for granted the grammar of schooling (Tyack and Tobin) as the basis and framework of studying ‘Education’ • Regards ‘Education’ as a single category for purposes of analysis, with an assumed common scope, and a set of implicitly shared knowledges, practices and assumptions • Assumes a common base to all uses of ‘Education’ • Takes the set of activities collected together and political-administratively so classified (and typically assembled under common statistical rubrics) as comprising the ‘Education’ sector.

Three components of sectors • Representation: what it is seen as ‘being for’ • Technology: its discourses and practices • Governance:how the activities and technologies making up the sector are coordinated • +, of course, a bracketing of ‘nationalist’ and ‘statist’ assumptions

Central argument; parallel Education sectors at European and national levels, with different representations, technologies and governance • Educationism leads us to make the idea of an ‘education sector’ problematic • NB, not rescaling upwards of national systems • Not zero sum; not necessarily hybrids, or combinations of regional and national activities and agents, but (somewhat) overlapping, and mutually influential • Emergent functional,scalar and sectoral division of labour, with issues around economic competitiveness shifting ‘upwards’, and issues around education’s role in the distribution of opportunities within national societies, etc remaining at the national level, or moving ‘downwards’, to the subnational level

The (?A?) European Education Sector? • At the European level, existing education sectors become themselves what is at stake, as they are perceived to be ‘unfit for purpose’ in a global knowledge economy. It is for this reason that we see the development of a European capacity in education, with a particular agenda to reform, reconstruct or transform the representation, the governance and the technology of education • But note again the deep embeddedness of the grammar of schooling, and the irreplaceable contribution to the national----’Europe’ cannot change these, but may rather ‘parallel’ them

Policy sectors in the EU; the case of Social Policy---Reasons • Strategic and instrumental reasons for development of sectors at EU level • Strategic: creates new areas of EU activity, competence, while avoiding issues of subsidiarity • Instrumental: enables added ‘Euro-value’ by synergising national capacities • ‘the significance of EU social policy lies in how it serves to construct and create a social sphere or space for EU action which in turn has dynamic effects on European identity and European society’(Daly, 2006, 465-6)

Policy sectors in the EU; the case of Social Policy---Differences • Purpose: not part of state-building and group identity and placement as at national level, but providing the underpinnings for a European integration project that is envisaged foremost as market integration • Values: the importance attributed to both subsidiarity and a competitive form of solidarity • Substance: lacks the core notions of social protection and redistribution that are synonymous with social policy at national level.’ (Daly, 2006,464)

Policy sectors in the EU; the case of Social Policy---Methodologies • These changes ‘disable’ the major (nation-state based) research approaches in the area—comparative welfare state analysis, and ‘effects on’ domestic politics, which emphasise states’ capacity to regulate welfare • Instead, ‘the Lisbon strategy and the OMC can be regarded as signs… that the EU social policy has left its customary place and has become a project to invent the social within the confines of the European Union……After Lisbon, it has no longer been relevant to make a distinction between EU-level and national level social policy, as this division, based on the Treaties' definition of competences in the area of social policy, is not recognised in the efforts to modernise social protection by means of the OMC’ Savio and Palola, (2004,4)

(How) do we see this in Education? • First, we need to recall that the Lisbon summit ‘does not acknowledge education as a “teleological” policy area, an area in itself..(it) is part of social policy, labour market and overall economic policy’ (Gornitzka 2005,17). • Argument is that we see this most clearly in the rise of Lifelong Learning as a sector, with different purposes, substance and values from those of MS ‘Education’ sectors, and linking (different forms of) education to Social Policy and Knowledge Policy sectors • Strategically, LLL is not a ‘sector’ in any MS (and may be distributed across different sectors in some of them), while that the new generation of EU DGEAC programmes is being coordinated under the heading of LLL (see, e g, CEC 2004). • A key element of the LLL agenda is its capacity to weld together the competitiveness and social cohesion components of the Lisbon agenda through the policy of ‘productive social policy’ (see Dale and Robertson 2005)

The development of the KnELL agenda • The LLL agenda very much a part of the response to the Lisbon goals and especially the competitiveness agenda;A ‘main political orientation’ following the 2005 mid term review of the Lisbon process is that ‘new priorities (be) defined for national education policies, i e, turning schools into open learning centres, providing support to (all) population groups, using the Internet and multimedia’ (Rodrigues 2004, 5) • This emphasis on the need for Europe to move towards becoming a Knowledge Economy makes it more useful to see call it the KnELL (Knowledge Economy and Lifelong Learning) sector

GOVERNANCE MECHANISMS PURPOSE ‘EUROPE’ PHASE 1—PRE-LISBON Working Party of MS Indicators Common conception of ‘Education’ Coordinator of National experiences/definer of ‘Quality’ PHASE 2—LISBON 2000-05 OMC Benchmarks; Best practice Common problem identification and policy coordination, diverse means; Orchestrator of Functional and Scalar Division of Labour of Educational Governance PHASE 3—LISBON POST MID TERM REVIEW Single (LLL) Organising Framework Targets (e g Investment) Common objectives, common route Creator of new European ‘Social policy’ and ‘Knowledge policy’ sectors

Phase 1 • Development of common indicators to allow mutual learning through comparison of common interests and shared differences • A move way from evaluating efficiency in the direction of cooperating towards common objectives… • And beyond to common challenges and agendas

Phase 2 • OMC (social) areas politically linked to economic project • European level in areas like education brought into being by OMC, which provides the means of constructing (European) ‘unity’ and enabling national diversity • Benchmarks for E+T ‘are not concrete targets for individual countries.. ..but reference levels for European average performance’ (Gornitzka) • OMC involves ‘unlearning and partial demolition of (nationally) entrenched institutional patterns, that brings home to MS political elites…the need for ‘modernization’ and ‘recalibration’ of their hitherto adopted social policies’ (Offe)

Phase 3: Lifelong Learning • 2000 (post Lisbon) Memo on LLL; ‘LLL is no longer just one aspect of E+T; it must become the guiding principle for participation across the full continuum of learning contexts • 2006, emphasis on need to accelerate pace of reform..in LLL,seen as a ‘sine qua non of achieving the Lisbon goals while strengthening the ESM’, calls for ‘Effective inter-Ministerial synergy between ‘knowledge policies’ (education, training, employment/social affairs, research) • Following MTR redirected goals for E+T, with an ‘integrated action programme in the field of LLL ‘as the basis of new generation of EU education programmes’

Lifelong Learning for Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Society (J Brine, 2006) • Based on textual analysis of EU LLL documents, finds ‘absolute consistency’ in construction of two categories of learner’, HKS (?European?) and LKS (?national?) • Knowledge Economy, associated with competitiveness agenda, means ‘EU needs its citizens to have high-level knowledge skills..(with individual responsibility) to continually update them through graduate study’ • Knowledge Society, associated with high unemployment and social exclusion, which is linked with LKS people, who must improve knowledge-skills to increase employability, through ‘cyclical vocational training’ (and no reference to HE)

Key Competences for LLL in Europe (EC 2005): A ‘Knowledge Society agenda’/Social Policy cluster? • Competence comprises knowledge, skills and attitudes…that serve for personal fulfilment, social inclusion and active citizenship and employment • ‘Key competences that all citizens should have for a successful life in a knowledge society’ • They need to be active, concerned, able to adapt and learn continuously • The key competences are: 1) communication in the mother tongue; 2) communication in foreign languages; 3) competences in maths, science and technology; 4) digital competence; 5) learning to learn; 6) interpersonal, intercultural and social competences, and civic competence; 7) entrepreneurship; 8) cultural expression.

A Knowledge Economy agenda/’Knowledge Policies’ cluster? • ‘No European country is large enough or strong enough to step into the knowledge era by itself. Given the scale of operations of our global competitors, it is not logical or efficient for any individual EU member to go it alone. The challenge is global, the response has to be European. Only if Europe plays as a team will we regain the lead in the world knowledge league….Of course, it is important to uphold the principle of subsidiarity: education and research policies are, and will remain, mainly national responsibilities. However, you will agree that there is a lot we can do together. Education, research, and the drive towards innovation are textbook cases in which the European whole is larger than the sum of its national parts. The most compelling example is the drive to establish genuine European areas in Higher Education, Research and Innovation’. (Barroso (2007))

Education and the European Union: towards a common education policy in Europe?