From: Isabel
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 3:49 PM
To: SEFCOVIC Maros (CAB-SEFCOVIC)
Subject: FW: EUROPEAN SCHOOLS: MESSAGE FROM VICE-PRESIDENT ŠEFCOVIC
Dear Commissioner
We've just got this email from you and allow me to express
my disappointment - you repeat what your services have been trying to tell
parents without considering that we and our children know much better the EE
system and its insufficiencies; that we are the ones who suffer with these
insufficiencies and therefore… it's useless to explain to us that the
Commission is not able to deal with them - we know this already.
We've seen for the last years, year after year, cuts in
the EE budget without considering the objectives and the pedagogical needs
of the system. This is not just a crisis issue - it was lack of commitment,
interest and political will even before the international economic crisis.
EEs were presented, by leaders with a vision, as a unique
model of European Education. And they were a unique model of education. The
present Commission will stay for ever as responsible for the destruction of
this model.
The system deteriorated year after year, but may be you
are not aware of this: no books or any decent pedagogical material in a lot
of sections, teachers working with no co-ordination under Directors with no
powers and Inspectors with no budget or power; programmes that have not been
revised for more then 20 years, incapacity to put together a common project
or a consensus on content or material or methods; a Baccalauréat considered
to be "unreliable" by external studies allowing therefore some Member States
to decide not to recognize it; 27% of students kicked out of the system in
the middle of the secondary, some of them obliged to go away from their
parents, to boarding schools in their country of origin… in order to get 98%
of success at the Bac as if this would proudly measure the systems' success
(this seems to be the only figure you're Cabinet was aware of in recent
discussions); one of the highest rates of failure and discriminatory
situations between sections, creating discrimination in the access to
universities… But do you really know what we are talking about? Do you think
emails such as the one you've just send reassure parents who know the
system?
We are now talking about budgetary cuts in a system where
precedent cuts managed to get these schools to a level that you don't see
any more in a lot of Member States ! It's a shame that you, as Commissioner
responsible for the Schools and your services, go on talking as if you could
still cut the budget or justify budget cuts proposed by Member states and
manage to have an education system - you don't have an education system
anymore.
What we, parents, had expected you to do is to show to
Member states the importance of this unique model of education and that you
would be able to show what the needs to achieve our education goals are. But
of course, and despite several requests of parents representatives, you
never did an independent study and you simply don't know the needs as you do
not seem to even understand the existing problems. The Commission pays 59%
of the total cost of the EEs but never checked the systems' performances and
the services it gets. So how could you defend our unique education system or
the families and students' interests and confront the Member states?
You should not send such emails to parents concerned with
their children's future. Our priorities are obviously not the same.
Isabel, a disappointed colleague and parent
