Ulf Fredriksson

Changes of Education Policies within the European Union in the Light of Globalisation

Education issues have traditionally not played a central role within the European Union (EU). This has gradually started to change in recent years. At the Lisbon European Council in March 2000, the heads of states and governments of the EU member countries, in response to the challenges of globalisation and the information society, set out a new strategic objective for the coming decade: ‘Becoming the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’. This implies major changes, and education will be among the areas affected. Two questions can be raised in relation to this development: (1) How can a European education policy be created within the existing framework of the EU? (2) What could be the content of such an education policy? This article sets out to answer these questions by examining new methods of working and the initiatives that have been undertaken. It goes on to look at some of the problems and challenges confronting the EU in adapting Europes education and training systems to the demands of the knowledge society, and, using an examination of how the EU is trying to find new methods for cooperation in the field of education and how elements of a European education policy can be found in present initiatives, it explores some scenarios setting out how the work of the EU and a European education policy can develop.

Innovative use of ICT in schools based on the findings in ELFE project

The European e-Learning Forum for Education (ELFE) is a project initiated by the ETUCE (European Trade Union Committee on Education). An important objective of the project has been to study good experiences with implementing the use of ICT in schools. This objective has been broken down in seven operational research questions. Three of these questions will be discussed in this article: (1) What difference does the use of ICT make in schools where ICT is intensively used for instructional/pedagogical purposes? (2) How are the students influenced by this different way of teaching as compared to the traditional classroom education, both individually and as a collective? 3) What factors influence the intensive pedagogical use of ICT? The ELFE study applied a case study approach. Three innovative schools in each of five European countries (Denmark, England, Germany, Norway and Portugal) were purposively selected. Data were collected via questionnaires, interviews, observations and school documents. The findings resulting from the ELFE schools case studies illustrate that the implementation of ICT for teaching and learning may influence the functioning of schools in a number of ways. One can also conclude that students like working with computers and that they have no ‘instrumental’ problems. A number of factors seem to influence the successful implementation of ICT at school level such as a good infrastructure, a clear vision, policy and strategy. A crucial factor is support from national, regional and local authorities, as well as from the school leadership and parents.

Strengths and Weaknesses in the Swedish and Swiss Education Systems: A Comparative Analysis Based on PISA Data

Sweden and Switzerland are among the wealthiest countries in the world, but also two countries with different approaches to how to provide welfare. Sweden has followed a social democratic welfare model and Switzerland a liberal model. This has implications for how the education systems have been organised. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study makes it possible to compare the achievements of students in reading and mathematics. Students in Switzerland are significantly better than Swedish students in mathematics. In reading, Swedish students are significantly better than Swiss students. In both countries, girls are better readers than boys. The gender difference in reading is larger in Sweden than in Switzerland. Boys are better than girls in mathematics. The gender difference in mathematics is smaller in Sweden than in Switzerland. The difference in reading between natives and non-natives is considerably lower in Sweden than in Switzerland. Sweden is among those countries where the variance between schools is very low. In Switzerland the variation in student performance among schools is higher than the average in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Both education systems may be regarded to be of high quality in an international perspective. The Swedish system has, with the exception of the gender gap in reading, produced a system that seems to have a higher degree of equity than the Swiss system.