The new European Union programme Erasmus for All underscores that mobility of educational staff is a vital Lifelong learning Tool offering more opportunities for teachers, trainers and youth workers to study and train in another country. The target to reach 1 million teachers, trainers and youth workers (compared to 600 000 under the current programmes) demonstrates this recognition of the importance of trans-national learning. We are also delighted with the demanded serious increase of the financial resources to implement the programme.
We whole heartedly agree with this principle of trans-national mobility of educational staff is a vital lifelong learning Tool. EUROCLIO has been working already during the twenty years of existence to improve knowledge, competences and skills of their professional target group, regarding their relevance for society, as well as the participation of young people in democratic life in Europe. We believe that excellent innovative professionals, mastering those three components, are certainly also preparing young people for a flexible and fast changing labor market.
However figures showed that under the current programmes the mobility of educational staff has been decreasing in the recent years. The EUROCLIO Member Associations have also signalled this phenomenon and therefore the EUROCLIO Secretariat has made inquiries among its Member Organisations about the possible causes for this decrease.
In 2010 we launched a Teacher Leave Campaign in which we have been collecting evidence why educational staff mobility for (cross-border) life long learning is problematic for teachers and trainers. And in 2010 and 2011 we collected data about the many hurdles colleagues faced in many European countries while applying for trans-national lifelong Learning mobility opportunities.
We identified two main elements, which are responsible for hampering the trans-national mobility of teachers and trainers. The first is the lack of priority within the national educational policies and secondly deficiencies in the implementation of the programmes by the National Agencies.
We therefore advocate a proactive national policy towards trans-border mobility of Education staff, for instance though including such mobility as a quality indicator for a professional profile of a teacher and a trainer. This indicator should also be included in the programmes of pre-service and in-service teacher training Institutes and organisations. In this way individual schools, and other institutes related to school education, have clear incentives to allow their employees to go abroad for Lifelong Learning events.
We also would like to emphasise the unique role of the National Agencies as true implementation actors of the programme. They should act as service institutes and helpdesks in order to facilitate and maximise the mobility of educational staff in order to support the benchmarks set by the programme. Too often their rules and regulations achieve the opposite.
EUROCLIO believes that only when Education for All is fully supported by national Educational Policy and the National Agencies the ambitious goals of the programme can be reached. The Association would like to share its knowledge and long time experience in cross- border Lifelong Learning with all who are interested to make the new EU educational programme a success.
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