Educational systems in the EU must answer the needs of the European economy and be adequately responsive. They cannot, however, depend solely on those needs, said Education Minister Milan Zver on the margins of the session of the EU Council for Education, Youth and Culture on Tuesday.
"Social and cultural dimensions must be considered in education in addition to the economic one," said Zver.
Most other ministers took the same view in the discussion on the integrated guidelines for growth and employment for the 2005-2008 period, which are to put the renewed Lisbon Strategy into practice.
"The educational systems...won't only qualify people according to market demands, but will also bring other benefits, which increases the freedom or autonomy of the systems", said Zver.
He added that "stressing the social and cultural function of the educational systems prevents total uniformity of school systems". According to Zver, this also renders the systems open to automatic development and aids the comparability and mobility of those that take part in them.
However, the ministers today agreed that the level of responsiveness of educational systems should be increased, given that "the economy nevertheless has certain expectations". Zver admitted this would be quite a challenge.
Zver pointed out that Slovenia's main problem is that too many students are opting for grammar schools instead of vocational high school education. He attributed this to cultural mentality in the country.
The state could mend this asymmetry with a suitable scholarship policy, promotion of vocations and mild administrative measures, whereas omission or limitation of programmes are less desirable, he said.
According to Zver, the educational system is usually a step behind the economy, but must be as responsive as possible.
Among other things discussed was the idea of integral foreign language teaching in schools, comprising individual subjects in foreign languages. Zver said this possibility was not very realistic, since the foreign language would thus become a regular language in the national education system.
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