New-look education and training programmes for the year 2000

Citation

(1999), "New-look education and training programmes for the year 2000", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 23 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeit.1999.00323cab.001

New-look education and training programmes for the year 2000

New-look education and training programmes for the year 2000

Keywords European Commission, Training, Young people

The European Commission is unveiling a strategy to promote education and training once the present set of EU programmes expires in December 1999. The new-look education and training initiative is intended to respond to the pressures of EU enlargement and the changing needs of students and trainees. In this context, the Commission proposes the framework for a new EU youth programme which would integrate the Youth for Europe and European Voluntary Service for Young People Programmes.

Four major actions should be reinforced:

1. 1.

   individual mobility within the voluntary service;

2. 2.

   group mobility within the exchanges of young people, in order to encourage diversity and tolerance by increased promotion of sport and cultural activities;

3. 3.

   youth initiatives which represent a concrete chance for carrying out projects;

4. 4.

   joint actions which address several types of public targets.

Another proposal concerns the second phase of the Leonardo de Vinci Programme (2000-06) for vocational training in the EU. The objectives are:

• •

  to strengthen social and professional integration of young people, in particular through apprenticeship;

• •

  to widen access to vocational training (of good quality) and enable the use of these skills throughout life;

• •

  to consolidate the employment reintegration process for people in precarious jobs.

The following actions are proposed:

• •

  increasing young people's physical mobility in training as well as virtual mobilities to promote the use of new information technologies;

• •

  extending all innovative pilot projects which developed new products and complete training processes;

• •

  creating European networks in support of a stable co-operation framework within the EU;

• •

  extending the promotion of linguistic abilities;

• •

  establishing EU terms of reference for quantitative and qualitative work.

The Commission has also put forward its proposal concerning the second phase of the EU's Socrates Programme (2000-06) which seeks to promote co-operation in the field of education through partnership across national boundaries. There are four major objectives:

1. 1.

   strengthening the European dimension in education at all levels;

2. 2.

   promoting co-operation in all sectors of education;

3. 3.

   removing obstacles to co-operation, in particular by promoting a better recognition of diplomas and by developing exchanges of information;

4. 4.

   encouraging innovation, in particular to enable the integration of education in an apprenticeship approach throughout life.