Common Position (EC) No 53/2000 of 9 November 2000 adopted by the Council, acting in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 251 of the Treaty establishing the European Community, with a view to adopting a recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European cooperation in quality evaluation in school education
Date: 2000-11-09
Institutions: Council of the European Union
Subjects: European cooperation, education policy, teaching, teaching curriculum

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COMMON POSITION (EC) No 53/2000

adopted by the Council on 9 November 2000

with a view to adopting a recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of ...
on European cooperation in quality evaluation in school education

(2000/C 375/03)

THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE
EUROPEAN UNION,

(4)

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Com-
munity, and in particular Article 149(4) and Article 150(4)
thereof,

Having regard to the proposal from the Commission (1),

Having regard to the opinion of the Economic and Social
Committee (2),

The resources devoted to education have increased in
all
industrialised countries during the last decades.
Education is seen not only as a personal enrichment but
also as a contribution towards social cohesion, social
inclusion and the solution to problems of employment.
Lifelong learning is an important means of controlling
one’s future on a professional and personal level. Quality
education is essential
in the light of labour market
policies,
the free movement of workers within the
Community and the recognition of diplomas and teach-
ing qualifications.

Having regard to the opinion of
Regions (3),

the Committee of

the

(5)

It is the responsibility of the Member States to ensure,
when they have the possibility, that school syllabuses
take account of developments in society.

Acting in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article
251 of the Treaty (4),

Whereas:

(1)

There is a need to promote a European dimension in
education as it is an essential objective in building a
people’s Europe.

(2) Quality education is one of the principal objectives of
primary and secondary education, including vocational
education, for all Member States in the context of the
learning society.

(3)

The quality of school education must be assured at all
levels and in all areas of education, regardless of any
differences in educational objectives, methods and needs,
and regardless of school excellence rankings where they
exist.

(1) OJ C ...
(2) OJ C 168, 16.6.2000, p. 30.
(3) Opinion delivered on 14 June 2000 (not yet published in the

Official Journal).

(4) Opinion of the European Parliament of 6 July 2000 (not yet
published in the Official Journal), Council Common Position of
9 November 2000 and decision of the European Parliament of ...
(not yet published in the Official Journal).

(6) Member States should help the educational establish-
ments to meet the educational and social requirements
in the new millennium and to keep pace with the
developments arising from them. Member States should
therefore support
the educational establishments in
order to improve the quality of the services they provide
by helping them to develop new initiatives geared to
ensure the quality of teaching and by helping them to
encourage both the movement of persons between
countries and the transfer of knowledge.

(7)

In the area of labour market policies, the Council adopts
each year a set of employment guidelines building on
quantitative targets and indicators. Guideline 7 of the
employment guidelines for 2000, set out in the Annex
to Decision 2000/228/EC (5), states that Member States
will ‘improve the quality of their school systems in order
to reduce substantially the number of young people who
drop out of the school system early. Particular attention
should also be given to young people with learning
difficulties’.

(5) OJ L 72, 21.3.2000, p. 15.

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(8)

In guideline 8 of the said guidelines, specific reference is
made to developing computer literacy, to equipping
schools with computer equipment and to facilitating
student access to the Internet by the end of 2002, which
should have a positive impact on the quality of education
and prepare young people for the digital age.

Council Recommendation 98/561/EC of 24 September
1998 on European cooperation in quality assurance in
higher education (1) underlines the importance of the
exchange of information and experiences and cooper-
ation regarding quality assurance between other Member
States.

(9)

The promotion of mobility enshrined as an objective of
the Community in Articles 149 and 150 of the Treaty
should be encouraged by quality education.

(10) European cooperation and transnational exchanges of
experiences will contribute to identifying and dissemin-
ating effective and acceptable methods of evaluating
quality.

(11) Systems designed to ensure quality must remain flexible
and be adaptable to the new situation created by
changes in the structure and objectives of educational
establishments, taking into account the cultural dimen-
sion of education.

(12)

Systems to ensure quality vary from one Member State
and one educational establishment to another, given the
diversity in the sizes, structures, financial circumstances,
institutional character and educational approach of
different establishments.

(13) Quality evaluation and school self-evaluation in particu-
lar are tools well suited to the aim of combating the
number of young people who drop out of the school
system early and social exclusion in general.

(14)

In order to achieve the objective of quality education, a
whole range of means are available. Quality evaluation
is one of them and is a valuable contribution to securing
and developing the quality of education within general
and vocational schools. The quality evaluation of edu-
cation must seek, inter alia, to assess the capacity of
schools to take account of the use of the new information
technologies which are becoming more widespread.

(15) The networking at European level of

institutions
involved in quality evaluation in school education is of
fundamental importance. Existing networks such as the
European network of policy makers for the evaluation
of education systems set up by the Member States in
1995 can provide invaluable aid to the implementation
of this recommendation.

(17) The Socrates programme (2), in particular action 6.1,
invites the Commission to promote the exchange of
information and experience on questions of common
interest. Evaluating quality in school education is one of
the priority themes of the said action.

(18) The Commission has, since March 1996,

launched
various studies and operational activities to examine the
question of evaluation from different perspectives with
the aim of describing the wide variety and wealth of
approaches and education evaluation methodologies
used at different levels.

(19) The Commission conducted a pilot project during the
academic year 1997/1998 in 101 upper and lower
secondary schools in the countries participating in the
Socrates programme, which raised awareness of quality
issues and helped to improve the quality of education in
those schools. The final report,
June 1999, entitled
‘Evaluation quality in school education: a European pilot
project’ emphasises a range of methodological elements
as important elements for successful self-evaluation.

(20)

In its conclusions of 16 December 1997 (3), the Council
stated that evaluation is also an important element for
assuring and, where appropriate, improving quality.

(21) The Council Presidency declared in its conclusions at the
extraordinary European Council held in Lisbon on
23 and 24 March 2000 that European education and
training systems must adapt both to the needs of the
information society and to the need to raise levels of
employment and improve its quality.

(22) With a view to the enlargement of the Union, the
accession countries should be involved in European
cooperation in the field of quality evaluation.

(23)

It
is necessary to take account of the principle of
subsidiarity and Member States’ exclusive responsibilities
for the organisation and structure of their education
systems, so that the particular cultural character and
educational traditions of each State can flourish,

(16) The Commission conducted a pilot project on quality
evaluation in higher education in 1994 and 1995.

(1) OJ L 270, 7.10.1998, p. 56.
(2) OJ L 28, 3.2.2000, p. 1.
(3) OJ C 1, 3.1.1998, p. 4.

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I.

RECOMMEND THAT MEMBER STATES:

within their specific economic, social and cultural context
while taking due account of the European dimension,
support the improvement of quality evaluation in school
education, by:

1.

supporting and, where appropriate, establishing
transparent quality evaluation systems with the
following aims:

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

to secure quality education, whilst promoting
social inclusion, and equal opportunities for
girls and boys;

to safeguard quality of school education as a
basis for lifelong learning;

self-evaluation as a
to encourage school
method of creating learning and improving
schools, within a balanced framework of school
self-evaluation and any external evaluations;

to use techniques aimed at improving quality
as a means of adapting more successfully to
the requirements of a world in rapid and
constant change;

to clarify the purpose and the conditions for
school self-evaluation, and to ensure that the
approach to self-evaluation is consistent with
other forms of regulation;

to develop external evaluation in order to
for school
provide methodological support
self-evaluation and to provide an outside view
of the school encouraging a process of continu-
ous improvement and taking care that this is
not restricted to purely administrative checks;

2.

3.

encouraging and supporting, where appropriate,
the involvement of school stakeholders, including
teachers, pupils, management, parents and experts,
in the process of external and self-evaluation in
schools in order to promote shared responsibility
for the improvement of schools;

supporting training in the management and the use
of self-evaluation instruments with the following
aims:

(a)

(b)

to make school self-evaluation function effec-
tively as an instrument strengthening the
capacity of schools to improve;

to ensure an efficient dissemination of exampl-
es of good practice and new instruments within
self-evaluation;

4.

supporting the capacity of schools to learn from one
another nationally and on a European scale, with
the following aims:

(a)

(b)

to identify and to disseminate good practice
and efficient
tools such as indicators and
benchmarks in the field of quality evaluation
in school education;

to form networks between schools, at all
appropriate levels , to support each other and
provide outside impetus to the evaluation
process;

5.

encouraging cooperation between all the authorities
involved in quality evaluation in school education
and promoting their European networking.

This cooperation could cover some of the following
areas:

(a)

(b)

(c)

the exchange of information and experience, in
particular on methodological developments
and examples of good practice, especially by
using modern information and communication
technologies, and, when appropriate, by organ-
ising European conferences,
seminars and
workshops;

the collection of data and the development of
tools such as indicators and benchmarks of
particular relevance for quality evaluation in
schools;

publication of results of school evaluation in
accordance with the relevant policies of each
Member State and its educational establish-
ments, to be made available to authorities in
the Member States;

(d) promoting contacts between experts in order
to build European expertise in the area;

(e) making use of

international
surveys for the development of quality evalu-
ation in schools;

the results of

II.

INVITE THE COMMISSION:

1.

to encourage, in close cooperation with the Member
States, and on the basis of existing Community
programmes, the cooperation referred to in points
4 and 5 of Section I, also involving relevant organis-
ations and associations with the necessary experi-
ence in this field.

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In doing this, the Commission should ensure that
full benefit is drawn from the expertise of the
Eurydice network referred to in action 6.1. of the
Socrates programme;

to establish, on the basis of the existing Community
programmes, a database for the dissemination of
effective tools and instruments of school quality
evaluation. The database
should also contain
examples of good practice and be accessible on the
Internet; interactive use thereof should be ensured;

to make use of the resources within existing Com-
munity programmes, to incorporate the experience
already gained into these programmes and to
develop the existing networks;

the various Member States. When the inventory has
been compiled, the Commission will work with
the Member States on appropriate follow-up. The
European Parliament, the Council, the Economic
and Social Committee and the Committee of the
Regions should be fully informed on a regular basis
of the follow-up;

to present on the basis of contributions from the
Member States triennial detailed reports to the
European Parliament, the Council, the Economic
and Social Committee and the Committee of the
Regions in relation to the implementation of this
Recommendation;

5.

6.

to draw conclusions and make proposals on the
basis of these reports.

Done at ...

to make, as a first step, an inventory of
the
instruments and strategies for quality evaluation in
primary and secondary education already in use in

For the European Parliament

For the Council

The President

The President

2.

3.

4.

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STATEMENT OF THE COUNCIL’S REASONS

I.

INTRODUCTION

1. On 24 January 2000, the Commission submitted to the European Parliament and to the
Council a proposal for a recommendation, based on Articles 149 and 150 of the Treaty
establishing the European Community, on European cooperation in quality evaluation in
school education.

2.

The Economic and Social Committee adopted its opinion on 27 April 2000.

3.

The Committee of the Regions adopted its opinion on 15 June 2000.

4.

5.

The European Parliament delivered its opinion on 6 July 2000.

In the light of the European Parliament’s opinion, the Commission submitted an amended
proposal for a decision on 3 August 2000.

6. On 9 November 2000, the Council adopted its Common Position in accordance with

Article 251 of the Treaty.

II.

AIM OF THE PROPOSAL

The proposal recommends that Member States support improvement of quality evaluation in school
education and enumerates various means of achieving this end. The Commission is called upon to
provide appropriate encouragement of cooperation in this field, as well as technical assistance and
follow-up.

1. General comments

In its Common Position, the Council has approved the essence of the Commission proposal. It has
introduced some amendments which it thought desirable and which correspond largely with
Parliament’s opinion.

2.

Specific comments

2.1. Amendments made by the Council to the Commission proposal

2.1.1. Recommendations addressed to Member States

— The Council restructured the text to bring out the complementary nature of

external and self-evaluation.

— The role of indicators and benchmarks in quality evaluation has been given

more emphasis.

— The role of school networks has been clarified

— Certain other themes have been introduced, such as:

— making results available where possible,

— using the results of international surveys.

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2.1.2. Invitations addressed to the Commission

The Council has indicated certain guidelines for the follow-up to the recommen-
dation.

2.1.3. Other questions

Inter alia, in the recitals:

— vocational education is cited together with primary and secondary education in
view of the recommendation’s double legal base (Articles 149(4) and 150(4))
(recital 2),

— the conclusions of the European Council of Lisbon have been given due weight

(recital 21),

— reference is made to the use of new information technologies as a factor in

quality evaluation (recital 14).

2.2. European Parliament amendments

2.2.2. Parliament amendments adopted by the Commission

The Commisson adopted in full, in part or in essence all the 42 amendments
tabled.

2.2.2. Parliament amendments adopted by the Council

The Council adopted in full, in part or in essence all the 42 amendments tabled.

III. CONCLUSIONS

The Council considers that its Common Position constitutes a balanced text, which will contribute
to both the improvement of quality evaluation in school education at Member State level and
cooperation at European level.