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Hello, everybody. We will start in a few minutes. I mean, right now, the press conference. I

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will ask just to keep quiet for the room. Welcome for this year's presentation, I mean,

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for the presentation of this year's edition of the European Commission's Education and

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training monitor, Commissioner Tibor Navracic, in charge of education, youth, culture, and

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sport, will now present the main findings of the report.

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Before, we will take some questions.

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Before starting, I can also highlight that tomorrow we will celebrate, it's another topic,

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but we will celebrate the 20 years of the Marie Curie grants, another topic that you

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can be interested in.

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and for all the press material which is available outside the room and online.

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You have a press release, you have a general fact sheet on the main results

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and you also have national sheets in all languages available to you.

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Thanks. Commissioner, the floor is yours.

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Thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

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Well, we are approaching the end of the year

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and you can be used to meeting at this period of time

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with the Education and Training Monitor,

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which is a policy product of Europe 2020,

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because it intends to give you a snapshot

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on the state of education in the European Union

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in the light of the so-called headline targets of Europe 2020.

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You may know that there are two headline targets

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defined in Europe 2020 document one is the dropout rate in education we and the

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the policy aim or the policy goal was to to bring down the dropout rate below 10

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percent as an average in the European Union and the other one is the tertiary

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attainment, the ratio of tertiary attainment

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in higher education. But of course

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beyond these policy goals, there are year by year

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some specific points which are included

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into our yearly produced

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document. Last year it was

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the point of social integration, how the education

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systems of the European Union member states can contribute to a more efficient social

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integration.

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And this year, this is the handling of the refugee crisis, how the education systems

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of the member states can handle the educational challenges of the newly arrived migrant young

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people.

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And the member states face a dual task in the European Union regarding the education systems

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to ensure adequate financial investments on the one hand

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and offering high-quality education to young people from all social backgrounds,

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and especially to refugees, that is the fairness side of the education systems.

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We can say, based on the data of the year 2014, because this year's Education Training

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Monitor is basically based on the data of the year 2014, that the picture is mixed,

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it gives some reason for optimism. Why? First, the level of investment in education. There

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is a rise of 1.1% annually across the EU, which gives even more reasons for optimism

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that there are six member states, namely Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Malta, Romania, and Slovakia,

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where the rise reached the level of more than 5%.

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That means that the level of investment, the increase in the level of investment reached the level of above 5%.

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It really gives some hope for us because you may know that European Union educational systems have been lagging behind other regions in the world

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while Asian and some American countries invested more than 5% of their GDP in education.

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In the past 10 years, the EU countries lagged behind that level.

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Now there are six member states which reached the 5% or even went above 5%.

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Unfortunately, there are some governments who cut the spending on education in 2014.

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That's why the picture is mixed.

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But again, a positive side.

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There is a progress towards reaching important EU targets.

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I just mentioned the dropout rate, which is below 10%.

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Now this data is 11% across the EU, so we are 1% from the headline target by 2020.

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And the other one is the tertiary education attainment, which climbed to 38.7%, and the target is 40% by 2020.

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So we are on a good track to reach both of the headline targets.

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The specific issue of this year's education and training monitor is the refugee situation in education systems.

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There are some encouraging examples of countries providing specific support to refugees and migrants.

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Let me mention three examples.

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In Germany, there is a discussion recruiting more than 40,000 teachers and thousands of social workers to create around 300,000 new places in its education system, from early childhood education and care to vocational education and training.

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In Finland, Finland has boosted financial support to municipalities to organize preparatory classes and Belgium has increased capacity of reception classes and number of language teachers.

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You may know that one of the biggest challenges in the refugee situation, in the education systems, is the unaccompanied minors and those young people, students or children, who lack the educational background.

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because coming from those countries where civil wars or the circumstances

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meant a lack of educational infrastructure or school education at all.

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Our next program is to work on the implementation of the skills agenda,

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and in that respect the education and training monitor will be a useful device

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for helping the Member States to meet the goals of the Skills Agenda

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and to implement those goals properly.

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Thank you very much for your attention.

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Thank you very much, Commissioner.

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We have now time for questions.

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Just to let you know, and you are already informed,

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that following this press conference we will have a technical briefing with our experts.

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So I will tend to refer you to them in case of technical questions

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or specific national questions as well, if need be.

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Now I can take your question.

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Please introduce yourself and your media.

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Thank you.