ENGAGING IN SOCIAL DIALOGUE
The European Federation of Education Employers (EFEE) was created in February 2009. It currently represents 20 employers’ organisations from 16 EU/EFTA countries: Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The European Trade-Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) is the representative organisation of teachers, trainers and lecturers at European Union level. It represents 115 organisations and 5.5 million individuals from the EU/EFTA countries.
Together, EFEE and ETUC form the Committee on European Social Dialogue in education. This Social Dialogue focuses on labour issues in the education sector. EFEE and ETUCE have developed a joint work programme that aims to maximise input into the European Social Dialogue process. This work programme focuses on the key elements outlined below.
For further information on the European Commission’s Social Dialogue policy, please click here.
These working groups function as preparatory groups, giving the employers the opportunity to prepare in advance of meetings with the trade unions. They also give every member of EFEE the opportunity to take part in the joint working programme and become involved in detailed discussion with ETUCE. The groups are structured as follows:
Group 1: Quality in Education
Led by Maria Pontieri (Italy) and comprises members from Malta, Latvia, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK (UCEA).
Group 2: Demography
Led by Camilla Vendelboe Hagensen (Denmark) and comprises members from Belgium (SeGEC), Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Norway and the UK (AoC).
Group 3: Education and Training after 2010
Led by David Simmonds (UK-NEOST) and comprises members from Belgium (AGPE), Cyprus, Finland and Slovakia.
Group 4: Higher Education issues
To be decided
Group 5: (EFEE only Working Group) Leadership and Governance in Schools
Led by Joseph Micallef (Malta) and comprises employers only members from Finland, the Netherlands and the UK.
THE CHALLENGE
Rather like apple pie and motherhood, everyone is in favour of the policy of lifelong learning (LLL). But the latest evidence from the EU benchmarks is there is insufficient progress in implementing the policy. [Compared with an EU target for 2010 of an average participation rate of 12.5% of the working age population (25-64) the latest figure was 9.5%].
This relative lack of progress is particularly worrying at a time when the skills needed for the jobs available on the labour market are changing ever more rapidly. Individuals increasingly need to re-skill several times in their working lives, which obviously means that they need appropriate opportunities for lifelong learning.
DEVELOPING COMMON SOLUTIONS
With this in mind, the joint EFEE/ETUCE work programme will focus on improving the progress of lifelong learning across Europe. Sub-regional workshops for teacher trade unions, student unions and employer representatives from all member states of ETUCE, OBESSU and EFEE will be taking place throughout 2010.
The workshops are designed as awareness raising and brainstorming events, where the three main project target groups, teacher unions, students and employers, will gather along with representatives from national governments. The workshops will offer key stakeholders in general education the opportunity to network and discuss current policy practices towards lifelong learning.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
During the workshop participants will be invited to work on identifying the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of the various national lifelong learning strategies, in order to further development their common understanding of these policy documents. A cross-border analysis on possible stakeholder contributions to national lifelong learning implementation will be developed. This analysis will look at improving the contribution of general school education to the acquisition of key competences for lifelong learning.
Representatives from the European Commission, CEDEFOP, the Cluster on Key Competences for lifelong learning and national representatives will be invited to speak at the workshops. Their presentations are aimed at updating the three groups of stakeholders on policy and legislative developments in the EU member states towards ensuring lifelong learning activities for everyone.
An Advisory Group, composed of representatives from the teacher trade unions, the student organisations and the employers in education respectively, will guide the project implementation and participate in the development of the final product; joint guidelines on the implementation of national lifelong learning strategies.
The EFEE representatives on the Advisory Group are Ingrid Haasová and Charles Nolda.
OUR TAKE ON LIFE-LONG LEARNING
‘If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.’ Chinese proverb
Lifelong learning should be a mutually beneficial concept. It should help ensure that individuals can meet the needs of the labour market but crucially, it is also about allowing everyone the chance to widen their interests and learn new skills throughout life. From surfing the internet to learning new languages, lifelong learning has value beyond economic reasons.
In addressing the uneven progress in the implementation of lifelong learning, several key issues need to be tackled; from the obvious questions of resources, curriculum and opportunity, to more abstract questions regarding motivation.
How should the curriculum be balanced between knowledge and skills? What place in the curriculum is there for the development of attitudes that are needed in the complex modern world? How is the motivation to learn best stimulated? How do we balance funding from the state, the employers and the individual? What needs to be done in schools to prepare young people for a lifetime in which they will never stop learning new things?
EFEE very much looks forward to exploring such issues with our partners, ETUCE and the Organisation Bureau for European Schools Student Unions (OBESSU). We hope that the project on LLL will enable us all to identify good practice in the implementation of national strategies on lifelong learning.
On the 11th of June 2010, EFEE and the ETUCE launched the European Sectoral Social Dialogue in Education (ESSDE).
European Union legislation (Articles 154-155 TF-EU) allows for social partners to create their own Sectoral Social Dialogue at EU level. The Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee for Education will be a permanent forum for unions and employers in education to discuss sectoral issues, exchange information and share good practices. The Committee will also deliver joint declarations and statements as well as common tools strengthening a European approach to education.
In principle, the ESSDE will cover the entire education sector: pre-primary, primary, secondary, VET and Higher Education. However, there are special considerations in relation to Higher Education which justify an exclusive and dedicated dialogue. But while ETUCE has member organisations in Higher Education in all countries, on the employers’ side, EFEE does not currently have enough representation in Higher Education to launch a European Social Dialogue at this level.
Addressing this issue, the seminar which took place on the 13th and 14th of May in Malta aimed to gather representatives from Higher Education Employers in order to consider the integration of Higher Education into the ESSDE. The seminar represented the first steps towards the creation of Higher Education social dialogue at European level.
In 2011 EFEE took part in the ETUCE project: Teachers' work-related stress: European-wide Survey - Assessment, Comparison and Evaluation of the Impact of Psychosocial Hazards on Teachers at their Workplace in the EU. The goal of the project was to raise awareness on the European Autonomous Framework Agreement on Work-Relates Stress (WRS), signed by the European Social Partners in 2004, and its implementation in the education sector.
In order to collect up-to-date statistics and information on teachers' work-related stress a survey has been conducted among teachers in 500 primary and secondary schools and VET institutions across Europe, targeting 5 to 10 teachers per school. The overall survey results were presented at the Final Project Conference in Berlin, in November 2011.
The results of the project are accessible here
Summary of Leadership and good governance project
Project title: “Leadership and Governance in Schools as instruments for improving student results and preparing them for lifelong learning.”
Project timing: One year, in 2011
Project description: The project will be a comparative study of the different approaches to leadership and governance in schools in the different countries of the EU and in candidate countries. There will be three meetings:
1. The Steering Group (see below) will meet in Malta on 18h of February hosted by the Ministry of Education in Malta to discuss issues like the selection, training and accountability of school leaders and their governance.
2. There will be a working group meeting on 10th of March in the Netherlands hosted by the Dutch Secondary Education Council for about ten member organisations of EFEE to exchange of best practices and to decide on the content of a survey questionnaire, designed to collect information on these issues.
During this meeting we will start the discussions on Leadership and Governance that will lead to the preparation of a structured survey taking into account the following questions:
3. There will be a conference in Dublin hosted by the Irish in the last phase of the project to present the results of the survey and to formulate conclusions including the possibility for further research. There will be a final project report, incorporating an analysis of the results of the survey, together with input from the Dublin conference. The Dublin conference will involve representatives from all EFEE member organisations, from ETUCE and from employers in four EU countries which have not yet joined EFEE and from three candidate countries (Poland, Estonia, Romania, Slovenia; Turkey, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).
Steering Committee: This will be chaired by Joseph Micallef (Malta), and will also include Riikka-Maria Yli-Suomu (Finland), Michael Moriarty (Ireland) and Sjoerd Slagter (Netherlands), assisted by the EFEE secretariat.
Project management: Bianka Stege will be the co-ordinator, but the day-to-day operations will be managed by Isabel Gaisbauer (CAOP) assisted by a Research colleague, with secretarial and financial support being undertaken by members of the EFEE secretariat.
In order familiarise potential future EFEE members of New Member States and Candidate Countries with the European Social Dialogue as such and with EFEE work in particular, we will open our working group to representatives of the following countries which are not yet members of EFEE: Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Candidate Countries (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, and Croatia). This will enable EFEE to broaden its work to a larger public and help the employer organisations in education in these countries in their capacity building process.
EFEE Members are welcome to attend the final conference on “Leadership & governance in schools” in October 2011 in Dublin.
Introduction
The 16 July 2010, EPSU, UNI EUROPA, ETUCE, HOSPEEM, CEMR, EFEE, EUROCOMMERCE, COESS, representing the social partners of the commerce, private security, local governments, education and hospital sectors have reached an agreement on multi-sectoral guidelines aimed to tackle third-party violence and harassment at work.
The project translated the guidelines into 22 languages, which can be accessed by clicking here. Please note that these translations, may be revised at the national level following discussions between the social partners within each country (download translations file .ZIP, 5,9 MB).
These Guidelines have been developed following two major conferences organised with the support of the Commission in March 2008 and October 2009 at which the outcomes of a research on third-party violence were presented along with case studies and joint conclusions. Therefore, these Guidelines build on these initiatives and complement the cross-sectoral Framework Agreement on Harassment and Violence at Work of 26 April 2007.
The aim of the Guidelines is to ensure that that each workplace has a results-oriented policy which addresses the issue of third-party violence. The Guidelines set out the practical steps that can be taken by employers, workers and their representatives /trade unions to reduce, prevent and mitigate problems. The steps reflect the best practices developed in our sectors and they can be complemented by more specific and/or additional measures.
According to EU and national law, both employers and workers have obligations in the field of health and safety. Although, the duty to ensure the health and safety of workers in every aspect related to the work lies with the employer the employee also has a responsibility to take care, as far as possible, of their own health and safety and that of other persons affected by their actions at work, in accordance with their training and the instructions given by their employer. Employers also have an obligation to consult workers and/or their representatives and allow them to take part on all questions relating to health and safety at work. This reflects awareness that, in practice, a joint approach to health and safety is the most successful.
The signatory social partners from the local and regional government, healthcare, commerce, private security, education sectors are increasingly concerned about the impact of third-party violence on employees because it not only undermines an individual’s health and dignity, but also has a very real economic impact in terms of absences from the workplace, morale and staff turnover. Third party-violence can also create an environment that is unsafe and even frightening to the public and service users and therefore has a wide negative social impact
Objectives of the project
In the chapter IV of the above mentioned guidelines on “Implementation and next steps”, the social partners commit to the following:
Stage 1 – Commitment and dissemination
The signatory social partners will:
Stage 2 – Awareness Raising
The national social partners will publicize the issue of third-party harassment and violence and develop and share best practice in this field within their sectors. This may include any means appropriate to the current state of knowledge and experience of the phenomenon of third party violence in the Member State and/or sector and taking into account work already undertaken in this area, including the possibilities of:
Stage 3 - Monitoring and follow-up
The signatory social partners will:
The materials of the project are accessible here
In 2012, a new project is launched by ETUCE on third party violence in schools: How to Prevent and Mitigate Third-Party Violence and Harassment in Schools? This project is a continuation of the former project on the Implementation of the multi-sectoral third party violence guidelines, in which EFEE also took place. Within the latter project, the social partners representing European employers and trade union organisations in the commerce, private security, local and regional government, education and hospital sectors committed themselves to promote the guidelines within the Member States at all appropriate levels taking account of national practices. In the beginning of 2012, the multi-sectoral guidelines on third party violence will be published in all European languages and made available for this new ETUCE project on third-party violence in schools.
In contrast to the former project, which has a multi-sectoral approach, the new project focuses only on the education sector. The aim of this project is to raise awareness and to ensure that the multi-sectoral guidelines on third party violence are used amongst teachers and education employers. The project results will help to prepare the progress report of the European Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee for Education on the implementation of the guidelines in the education sector.
In an online survey national and regional strategies/actions (best practices) on how social partners deal with third-party violence will be identified. The survey will be conducted among ETUCE and EFEE members in the period from 15 February to 15 April 2012. The outcome of the survey will be presented in an online exhibition.
Furthermore, the project will include three case studies consisting of visits to a (primary/secondary or VET) school in Sweden, Spain and Poland. For the case studies interviews will be conducted with teaching staff members, school headmasters, representatives dealing with third-party violence incidents at the school and (local) authorities in charge of preventing third-party violence.
Moreover, two regional seminars will be organised. The first seminar for ETUCE/EFEE members from North-East Europe is to be held in Warsaw on 26 April, 2012. The second regional seminar will take place in Brussels on 7 June 2012 for participants from the South-western part of Europe. The final conference is expected to be take place in Cyprus on 27-28 September 2012 to coincide with the Cypriot EU Presidency. The conference intends to sum-up the seminars and will invite, apart from ETUCE and EFEE members, also representatives from the Cypriot presidency, DG EMPL, EU-OSHA and other sectors.
On behalf of EFEE, Paulina Tervahartiala (Finland/ Association of Finnish Independent Education Employers) and Stéphane Vanoirbeck (Belgium/Segec) take part in the project. Furthermore, Bianka Stege takes part in the Advisory Committee.