Migration, mobility and education

Key points

The Green Paper addresses a major challenge facing education systems today: the fact that there is a large number of children in schools from a migrant background living in a precarious socio-economic situation and showing low educational attainment, low rates of school completion and high rates of early school leaving, which risks undermining their integration in school, as well as later in the labour market and in society.

Even though education is still the responsibility of national governments, the Committee considers that the European Union should coordinate the policies needed to achieve the highest possible degree of integration and encourage the Member States to use the Open Method of Coordination in this field.

The EESC believes that the educational response must be mainly based on:

• a high-quality education system open to everyone and free of charge;
• a policy which respects ethnic, socio-cultural, economic and gender differences, amongst other things, and which is able to capitalise on existing potential; and
• the respect for the specific features of each migrant community.

Directive 77/486/EEC, which was meant to respond to the situation of migrant children, is historically and politically outmoded and should therefore be substantially amended, to take account of developments in the phenomenon of migration itself and to become a real tool for achieving the social, economic and political integration of migrants and their children.