Press Releases

Gehrer: "Education is the key to more growth and jobs"

Trend towards learning foreign languages in Europe continues unbroken

"Education is the key to more growth and jobs”, the Minister for Education, Elisabeth Gehrer, stated at the EU Education Council in Brussels today. "The second interim report on the EU’s 'Education and Training 2010' programme is ready and was adopted by the Council today." The report contains five key indicators of the performance of an education system.

In the margins of the Council, Minister Gehrer said that, in Austria, more young people were now undergoing training after their compulsory schooling and that progress was being made in the natural sciences. Council President Schüssel had already announced that the conclusions of the Education Council would play an important role at the March European Council in Brussels. "This highlights once again the importance of education in Europe”, Ms Gehrer said.

The EU Education and Training Ministers also touched on the situation regarding European citizens' knowledge of foreign languages. Work is in progress to produce a language competence indicator. "Languages must not only be acquired, but also need to be used", Gehrer said. She stressed that the interest in learning foreign languages in Europe continued unabated. 56% of EU citizens were already fluent in a foreign language, and more than two-thirds considered that it was very important to learn foreign languages.

Minister Gehrer also spoke about the success story of the EU mobility programmes which have been running for 30 years now. "The mobility of young people promotes an understanding of other cultures and imparts lasting knowledge of foreign languages", she said. The current President of the Council also pointed out that, since the programmes began, hundreds of thousands of young people had been able to gain experience in other EU countries. Since 1995, more than 75,000 people from Austria alone have taken part in the numerous programmes.  

The new Lifelong Learning programme for 2007-2013 is composed of four individual programmes:

• Comenius: general education in schools, e.g. partnership projects. In the future, individual pupils, and not only school classes, will be able to visit another European country
• Leonardo da Vinci: promotes vocational training and mobility of individuals
• Grundtvig: adult lifelong learning programme
• Erasmus: university education and student mobility

In conclusion, the Minister referred to the forthcoming informal Education Council in Vienna on 16 and 17 March, at which the further development of the Lifelong Learning programme will be discussed. The Education and Training Ministers from the West Balkan countries will also participate.