ETUCE Unite for Quality Education culmination event
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On 22 September 2014, the EI initiative Unite for Quality Education Campaign reached its peak in the European Region. ETUCE affiliates, government and European Commission representatives, as well as various stakeholders in education took part in the ETUCE public hearing on the Future of Quality Education in Europe. The event was hosted by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in Brussels to celebrate one year of campaign activities.
"One thing is abundantly clear: You don't want to outsource quality. Education is a human right and a public good. It is the responsibility of governments to provide free quality public education for all" said EI President Susan Hopgood in her welcome speech to almost 100 participants. As the European region's culmination event of the EI initiative Unite for Quality Education, the message raised at the hearing was brought to the culmination event of the global campaign taking place in New York at the United Nation General Assembly on 26 September 2014.
ETUCE member organisations promoted and recalled to high level policy-makers the 10 ETUCE key messages on "What is needed to improve the Quality of Education in Europe?", adopted by the ETUCE Committee on 23-24 October 2013. Notable speakers included the Director General for Education and Culture from the European Commission, Xavier Prats Monné, who detailed the EC's vision about the future of Quality Education; Marcello Limina Chair of the Education Committee of the EU Council of Ministers, who explained the Italian Presidency's view for enhancing investments in education and welcomed further collaboration between ETUCE and the Education Committee of the EU Council; and Mirja Becker, First Secretary responsible for Trade issues at the German Permanent Representation to the EU, who strongly stated the German government's position on excluding education from TTIP. Eventually, Marco Düerkop, TTIP Services lead negotiator at the EC, took deeply into consideration the ETUCE comment on the risk that TTIP could restrict the space for governments' action on previously privatised education services.
Together with Members of the European Parliament from diverse political groups (EPP, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL) they engaged to find long-term solutions to enhance Quality of Education in Europe. They agreed that Quality Education is a vital prerequisite for a democratic Europe, and it is the sole way to enhance quality growth, to recover from the economic crisis, and to build a fair and equitable European society.
In the morning, at the final conference of the project 'Development of Teacher Union Expertise in Exiting the Crisis through Quality Education', the first screening of the ETUCE project film-documentary 'When Europe forgot its homework: Education in Crisis', gave participants the opportunity to look in depth into the real impact that austerity measures and budget cuts in the education sector.