Education Minister Questions Aptness and Relevance of International Education Rankings

Despite the 2008 Recommendation on the European Qualifications Framework, the Ministers adopted new Council Recommendations on the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning. The purpose of these new recommendations is to address the problems and limitations of the former.

Subsequently, a report on the state of play of the revision of the European framework for the transparency of qualifications, Europass, introduced in 2004, was presented to the ministers before they actively participated in an orientation debate on the expression of learners As part of an improvement and modernisation of the systems to ensure quality education for all.

Minister Claude Meisch stressed that in order to achieve this goal, a series of measures must be put in place, to give schools greater autonomy or to develop modern didactic materials to respond to the digital revolution. According to the minister, young people must be actively involved in this process and they must be helped to become active and responsible citizens.

In conclusion, Member States expressed the need for international efforts to collect and analyse data on citizenship and inclusion. The Minister affirmed that Luxembourg has always been in favour of participation in international studies such as the PISA study. He suggested, however, that more robust and relevant frameworks for such assessments be established, taking into account country specificities. According to Claude Meisch, one must stop the "rankings" of countries that simply compare what is incomparable.