EFIL welcomes the Communication of the European Commission ‘School development and excellent teaching for a great start in life‘ which follows the initiative of December 2016 ‘Improving and modernising education‘.
In particular, we are glad that and increase in pupil mobility under Erasmus+ is foreseen as a measure for developing better and more inclusive schools. EFIL, together with EEE-YFU, OBESSU and the European School Heads Association has been calling for the past year for an increase in the funding of pupil mobility under Erasmus+, and for the possibility of organisations expert in pupil mobility to partner up with the schools to run the mobility programmes. This approach would allow many more schools to access the programme, ensure quality of the mobility experience and foster cooperation between the formal and non-formal education sector.
You can read our joint position paper on pupil mobility in Erasmus+ here .
EFIL also welcomes the focus of the Communication on training for teachers on dealing with diversity, and we call for a focus on developing the intercultural competences of teachers so that they can include intercultural learning across subjects and within a whole school approach. The Commission also underlines the importance of teacher mobility for fostering excellence in teaching and learning, however there are constraints in how national education system are built, which do not allow teachers to spend a period abroad. These need to be tackled my national governments.
Finally, modernisation of education is not only about digitalisation: school systems need to be up to date in the way they approach the teaching of subjects by providing multiple perspectives in order to advance critical thinking and intercultural learning. This can only be done through the development of competence-based curricula, shifting away from a nationalistic approach to education.
More information here.