System Blockages for Access to Education in Europe: Paper Commitments and Substantive Gaps

Two of the five EU benchmarks for Education and Training ET2020 are central to the issue of access to education for marginalised groups and are prima facie relevant to a view of access to education being an EU strategic priority on paper. These are that (1) the share of 30–34-year-olds with tertiary educational attainment should be at least 40 % and (2) an average of at least 15 % of adults aged 25–64 should participate in lifelong learning. There is a need to place opening up barriers to access to higher education more firmly on the policy agenda at EU level and across national levels in Europe. Despite a number of commitments in EU Council and Commission documents in the past decade, it appears that the equity, social cohesion and active citizenship issue of access to higher education for lower socio-economic groups are currently falling between two stools in relation to the ET2020 targets. It is relevant on paper to both higher education and lifelong learning benchmarks but arguably being sufficiently prioritised by neither.