Comparative report
Executive summary
The Education and Training Monitor is the European Commission’s annual report on EU countries’ progress towards reaching EU-level targets in education and training. It comprises a comparative report, 27 country reports, and an online Monitor Toolbox with key indicators and sources. The 2024 edition focuses on learning for sustainability. This builds on the 2022 Council Recommendation on learning for the green transition and sustainable development and a new conceptual framework for monitoring learning for sustainability. The focus on learning for sustainability is based on the 2021 Council Resolution on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area (EEA), and follows the 2022 focus on equity in education and 2023 focus on the teaching profession.
Learning for sustainability
Learning for sustainability is often left to individual schools or teachers, limiting its impact on the competences of young people to act for sustainability.
Learning for sustainability is about the holistic and interdisciplinary learning experiences that enable students to embody sustainability values, vision, and mindset. Sustainability competences enable learners to understand and critically analyse complex economic, environmental, and social systems, while empowering them to take individual and collective action towards the green transition. Young people subscribe to sustainability values, with 83.6% believing in the importance of making changes to one’s personal life to become more environmentally friendly. A foundational knowledge of sustainability is present too, though ranging widely across EU countries (from the highest level in Denmark to the lowest in Bulgaria). However, the fact that only few young people act for sustainability in daily life (29.8%) may point at a lack of support and encouragement to link knowledge to action.
Schools can play a role in nurturing acting for sustainability. Most EU education systems have started helping schools develop whole-school approaches to learning for sustainability. However, the curricular coverage across the EU remains limited. For instance, futures literacy, which can help learners turn complacency or eco-anxiety into action and resilience, remains the least covered of all sustainability competences. There also seems to be a tendency to focus on low-impact actions rather than complex sustainability challenges, with school principals mostly reporting activities such as differential waste collection (83.9%). Finally, teachers feel prepared to teach about sustainability despite a lack of pre-service or in-service training, leaving transformative (action-oriented) pedagogies not widely adopted. All in all, only 42.1% of young people report having had a good opportunity to learn about sustainability in school.
EU-level target areas
Entry into early childhood education is delayed depending on a country’s policy measures to increase enrolment.
At 93.1% in 2022, the overall share of children between the age of 3 and the start of compulsory primary education enrolled in early childhood education and care (ECEC) was up by 0.6 percentage points compared with 2021 and 1.9 compared with 2014. Recent progress has been remarkable in Portugal and Lithuania due to reforms. Participation varies by age, with older children showing higher rates in all EU countries, as attendance is often compulsory the year before entering primary education. For younger children, a legal entitlement to ECEC may exist, even if provision may not be free. This might explain the substantial participation gap (15.8 percentage points) between children at risk of poverty or social exclusion and those not at risk. As for learning for sustainability, the relevant topics are covered in the ECEC guidelines of most EU education systems. However, the target age and the depth of coverage vary a lot.
A minimum level of educational attainment is challenged by absenteeism, out-of-school rates, and early school leaving among specific at-risk groups.
Early school leaving is becoming less prevalent across the EU, though still affecting 9.5% of all 18-24-year-olds, or around 3.1 million young people. Country variation is increasing, and young people with disabilities (22.2%) and first-generation non-EU migrants (23.0%) remain at serious risk. The problem combines issues of school dropout (most evident in vocational tracks) and out-of-school rates (with an estimated 1.3 million young people in the target age range not enrolled in upper secondary education). Only 64.1% of young people whose parents have a low level of education reach the level of upper secondary education themselves. Most EU education systems promote monitoring actions to prevent early school leaving, accompanied by individual education plans that especially target learners with special educational needs or migrant backgrounds. Wellbeing and absenteeism have received particular attention since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Record-high underachievement in basic skills among today’s 15-year-olds could jeopardise Europe’s future competitiveness and societal resilience.
Underachievement in basic skills is on the rise across the EU, with record-high rates for reading (26.2%), mathematics (29.5%), and science (24.2%). This is bound to pose a hardship for today’s youth and could jeopardise Europe’s competitiveness moving forward. School closures during COVID-19 may have played their part, even if a decline in performance was already under way for several EU education systems. Looking at a more severe measure of underachievement (in all three school subjects at the same time), the outsized effects of a student’s socio-economic background went from bad to worse. Disadvantaged learners used to be at a 5.5 times higher risk of severe underachievement and are now at a 6.1 times higher risk when compared to their advantaged peers. Inequity is most pronounced in Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Hungary, and is strongly linked to school segregation.
Work-based learning in vocational education and training (VET) shows the highest country variability of all EU-level target areas.
At EU level, the share of work-based learning in VET (64.5% in 2023) exceeds the 2025 EU-level target of at least 60%. The employment rate of recent VET graduates (81.0%) is the highest on record since 2014, putting the EU on track to reach the target of 82% by 2025. Countries that do well on both work-based learning and employability include Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria. Countries that perform poorly on both counts include Romania and Italy. On average, recent VET graduates who experienced work-based learning have higher employment rates (84.8%) than those who did not (71.5%). The latest estimates suggest that 5.1% of medium-level VET learners had a mobility experience abroad, far below the 2030 EU-level target of at least 12%. As for learning for sustainability, EU countries are reforming their VET systems, with new or updated curricula, greener infrastructure, and training for teachers and trainers.
The persistent expansion of tertiary education is not reflected in the number of entrants in ICT.
The tertiary educational attainment rate of 25–34-year-olds continues to increase, reaching 43.1% in 2023. Educational attainment at tertiary level is now the most common level of attainment among young adults in the EU, though substantial differences remain within countries. To support equal access to tertiary education, EU countries provide direct and indirect financial support. Disadvantaged students can receive needs-based grants in almost all EU education systems – even though the share of the student population covered varies a lot – and subsidies are available to cover meals, transport, and accommodation in 18 systems across the EU. As an example of the link between tertiary education and the labour market, there have been no substantial improvements in the number of entrants and graduates in ICT, despite the 2030 EU-level target of 20 million ICT specialists.
An incomplete picture of learning mobility in tertiary education suggests low uptake and a substantial imbalance at national level between sending to and hosting from abroad.
In 2022, the outward mobility rate was only 11.0% at EU level, 12 percentage points lower than the target set for 2030. However, figures are likely to be underestimated due to several limitations affecting learning mobility data. Such data cover graduates obtaining their degree abroad and graduates who only had a short stay abroad, the latter mainly financed by Erasmus+. Inward degree mobility varies a lot between countries in terms of shares and regions of origin. This depends, among other things, on historical ties, geographical proximity, and shared languages. Overall, 30% of inward degree mobility to EU countries also originated from EU countries in 2022. Intra-EU mobility accounted for more than half of all inward degree mobility in one third of EU countries. Mobility in the EU tends to be highly imbalanced in terms of countries that mostly send students abroad versus countries that mostly host students from other EU countries.
Adult participation in learning is low and progressing too slowly, particularly among key target groups most in need of reskilling and upskilling.
At 39.5% in 2022, adult participation in learning is not on track to reach the EU-level targets. Participation rates are not only uneven across EU countries (from 9.5% in Bulgaria to 66.5% in Sweden). They are also substantially lower among key target groups of adults most in need of reskilling and upskilling. Examples are adults who are low qualified (18.4%), aged 55 and over (29.9%), unemployed (26.8%), outside the labour force (23.7%), or living in the EU’s rural areas (34.4%). These results are likely to only exacerbate existing inequalities. Sustainability is being incorporated into training offers, for instance through changes to curricula, increases in relevant training opportunities, and investments in infrastructure. However, the low participation rates of the target groups most in need risk generating unequal development of sustainability competences and pose employability challenges during the green transition.