School education: European cooperation in quality evaluation. Recommendation

The committee adopted the report (codecision, first reading) by Marieke SANDERS-TEN HOLTE (ELDR, NL) amending the Commission proposal on European cooperation in quality evaluation in school education. The report endorsed most of the Commission's recommendations but argued that it should have defined the concept of "quality evaluation in school education" and made more use of an existing list of "quality indicators". The committee suggested a number of additional measures, such as increased external evaluation, more self-evaluation by schools (which would hopefully lead to greater cooperation between parents, teachers and educational authorities), the inclusion of an interactive dimension in the databases which the proposal aimed to create in order to disseminate new technical knowledge, and measures to give the applicant countries the opportunity to contribute to the process. The committee also called for Community funding from various EU education programmes to be used to support the proposed strategy. Lastly, it felt it was imperative that any findings emerging from the exchange of information be followed up by the Commission. �