The Next Curve

Current Themes
Thematic Dossiers

The Next Curve

Innovation

ePortfolio

Quality Criteria

Leadership

Insight Reports

more reports

Home > Thematic Dossiers > The Next Curve

In recent years, ICT has slipped down the political agenda in a number of European countries. Other issues are taking front stage. Under the heading of “The Next Curve”, handling such shifting priorities was the theme of a recent Policy and Innovation Committee (PIC) meeting which took place on 6 June 2006 in Belfast.

At the meeting, participants assessed how the change in political priorities affected EU countries and their ICT policies. Feedback from PIC members indicates such a trend for some, but not for all countries. In a number of countries, ICT may have shifted out of the spotlight, but not off the stage: It is now implicit and embedded in major policies issues.

Another topic of the meeting was to study these main policy issues or also called ‘banner’ issues. This series of papers, gives examples of these banner issues in various European Countries (England, Denmark, Catalonia, Estonia and Switzerland) and EU institutions.


20 September 2006 I Alan McCluskey, CTIE The next curve: emerging issues in education The initial hypothesis in preparatory discussions for the Belfast meeting of European Schoolnet’s Policy and Innovation Committee was that constellations of major policy issues generally go under a “banner” that acts as a political call to arms: life-long learning... Full article		20 September 2006 I Enel Mägi, TigerLeap Foundation Issues in Estonia: The challenge of having fewer children! The common objectives of the reforms at all levels of education in Estonia are: higher quality of education, better accessibility and more effective use of resources. The major challenge to all reforms in the next years is the drastic decrease in the number of children. By 2008/2009,... Full article

20 September 2006 I Bert Jaap van Oel, Dutch Inspectorate The Netherlands under the banner of innovation Innovation is the banner issue that drives many changes in education in the Netherlands. The Prime Minister has instigated an Innovation platform that among other things wrote the ‘2006-2016 Agenda for intensifying knowledge’. The agenda is a green paper, input for discussions... Full article		29 September 2006 I Alan McCluskey, Swiss Agency for ICT in Education Handling educational change in Switzerland: The perspective of the Swiss Agency for ICT in Education When thinking of the current situation of education in Switzerland, a number of issues spring to mind. First and foremost is the harmonisation of the Swiss federal education system. Competence for education in Switzerland is shared between the Confederation, the Cantons and the local... Full article

29 September 2006 I Orland Cardona, Head of the ICT Projects in Education Unit, Government of Catalonia Handling changing circumstances in Catalonia Educational and ICT issues: There are a number of major issues in education in Catalonia at the moment. Dealing with immigration is one of the most important. Catalan is a minority language and the local Government has committed itself to integrating people arriving from other countries... Full article		29 September 2006 I Leo Højsholt-Poulsen, Head of Education, UNI•C Denmark: “We did not forget ICT, we just forgot to write it” In the recent strategy paper from the Danish government on Denmark in the global economy, “Progress, innovation and cohesion”, ICT in education was not mentioned as a special priority area in the first draft. Full article

29 September 2006 I José Pessanha, European Commission DG Education and Culture The new European Union action programme DG EAC is preparing the launch of the new EU Action programme in the field of lifelong learning 2007-2013. It comprises sectoral programmes on school education (Comenius), higher education (Erasmus), vocational training (Leonardo da Vinci) and adult education (Grundtvig), and is... Full article