· Web viewThe SAERA project aims to develop a strategy for adult education in the rural areas through the means of TeleCenters and by establishing partnerships at local and European

Strategy for Adult Education in Rural Areas (SAERA) Reference No. of the Financial Agreement: 90601-CP-1-RO-GRUNDTVIG-G1

STUDY- Contexts and the identified needs in the rural areas of the countries involved in the

project –

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CHAPTERS

1. INTRODUCTION: EUROPEAN CONTEXT FOR THE SAERA PROJECTPage 3 – 13

2. NATIONAL CONTEXTSPage 14

2.1. RomaniaPage 15 - 48

2.2. HungaryPage 49 - 63

2.3. PolandPage 64 – 77

2.4. SpainPage 78 - 84

2.5. FrancePage 85 - 89

2.6. DenmarkPage 90 - 93

3. NEEDS ANALYSIS IN THE PROJECTPage 94

3.1. RomaniaPage 95 – 119

3.2. HungaryPage 120 - 121

3.3. PolandPage 122 - 158

3.4. SpainPage 159 - 169

3.5. FrancePage 170 - 172

3.6. DenmarkPage 173 - 177

4. HIERARCHY OF NEEDSPage 178 – 179

5. CONCLUSIONSPage 180

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CHAPTER 1INTRODUCTION: EUROPEAN CONTEXT FOR THE SAERA PROJECT

The Directorate-General for Education and Culture describes education as “a primary concern of government in all European countries, but the structure of education systems differ considerably, both within and between countries.”

Having in mind one of remarks “Different countries, and different sectors within countries, do not have a common terminology to describe skills, occupational titles and job qualifications”, we have stated in our project the need to develop a “Strategy for adult education in rural areas”. The proposed project was targeted for the rural areas having in mind the fact that the continuous education of adults is almost nonexistent in those areas. Even if the level of economic and social development in the rural areas of the countries partner in the project is different, at certain level there are problems and some of these are common to all countries (access to education, access to culture, integration of immigrants, disadvantaged categories, ethnic religious or sexual minorities etc.)

The educational system at European level encourages both the common and the particular, national aspects, in order to achieve a “coherent European policies in areas (such as education) where a common policy is not feasible” (Lisbon European Council, 23-24 March 2000). The new strategic objective for the next decade in respect of the European Union is: “Becoming the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.

The European dimension is given by a close partnership, at many levels.

The first level is a local one, needed in order to obtain a realistic needs’ assessment in order to have the first step for the strategy. The local partnership will include specialists in the field of strategy, continuous education for adults, representatives of the local public administrations, schools, cultural institutions, economic media, representatives of the cults, institutions involved in adult education, as well as those of the target groups. It is important that representatives of the target groups aimed at from the rural areas should participate in an active way to the needs’ identification, thus making them very concrete and real. In this way the target groups become actors and subjects of the project. The elaboration of a strategy based on a partnership is an experience proved to be most efficient.

The next level of partnership is the one achieved among the partners involved in the project, in order to create the SAERA team. The project’s partnership intends to actively involve all team members; the roles are shared to facilitate the accomplishment of tasks and feelings of group togetherness. Feedback is asked by members and freely given as a way of evaluating the team’s performance and clarifying both feelings and interests of the team members. When feedback is given it is done with a desire to help the other person. Team decision-making involves a process that encourages active participation by all members. Leadership is distributed and shared among team members and individuals willingly contribute their resources as needed.

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Problem solving, discussing team issues, and critiquing team effectiveness are encouraged by all team members. Conflict is not suppressed. Team members are allowed to express negative feelings and confrontation within the team, which is managed and dealt with by team members. Dealing with and managing conflict is seen as a way to improve team performance. Team member resources, talents, skills, knowledge, and experiences are fully identified, recognized, and used whenever appropriate.

The partnerships established inside the project are accordingly to the Lisbon European Council’s future objectives: “to undertake a general reflection on the concrete future objectives of education systems, focusing on common concerns and priorities while respecting national diversity”.

The Bologna declaration acknowledges the important role of NGOs in higher education: “together with non-governmental European organizations with competencies in higher education”, therefore we consider that the involvement of several organizations in the project’s expresses and uses the different experiences, approaches and preoccupations in the field of adult education.

The project is a part of the SOCRATES program, which covers all areas of education at all ages and levels of ability. The program was launched in 1995 together with the Leonardo da Vinci and Youth program. From The Socrates program, the Grundtvig (adult education and other educational pathways) is the one funding our initiative. The Grundtvig action “is aimed at enhancing the European dimension of lifelong learning1. It supports a wide range of activities designed to promote innovation and the improved availability, accessibility and quality of educational provision for adults, by means of European co-operation.”

The SOCRATES program was adopted by Decision 819/95/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (14th March 1995) which introduced for the first time the implementation of an overall program in the area of education. Article 1 of the Decision states: “This program is intended to contribute to the development of quality education and training and the creation of an open European area for cooperation in education.”

Over and above this general objective, the program has set out nine specific objectives:(1) To develop the European dimension in education at all levels so as to strengthen

the spirit of European citizenship, drawing on the cultural heritage of each Member State;

(2) To promote a quantitative and qualitative improvement of the knowledge of the languages of EU, and in particular those which are least widely used and least taught, leading to greater understanding and solidarity between the peoples of EU, and to promote the intercultural dimension of education;

1 Following the adoption by the Commission on 21st November 2001 of the Communication on “Making a European Area of Lifelong Learning a Reality” the “lifelong learning has become the guiding principle for the development of education and training policy”.

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(3) To promote wide-ranging and intensive cooperation between institutions in the Member States at all levels of education, enhancing their intellectual and teaching potential;

(4) To encourage the mobility of teachers, so as to promote a European dimension in studies and to contribute to the qualitative improvement of their skills;

(5) To encourage the mobility for students, enabling them to complete part of their studies in another Member State, so as to contribute to the consolidation of the European dimension in education;

(6) To encourage contact among pupils in the EU and to promote the European dimension in their education;

(7) To encourage the academic recognition of diplomas, periods of study and other qualifications, with the aim of facilitating the development of an open European are for cooperation in education;

(8) To encourage open and distance education in the context of the activities of this program;

(9) To foster exchanges of information and experience so that the diversity and specificity of the educational system in the Member States become a source of enrichment and of mutual stimulation.

The general aim of the Community policy on education is: “to contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action, while fully respecting the responsibility of the Member States for the content of teaching and the organization of education systems and their cultural and linguistic diversity.” 2

The Commission will encourage “open cooperation between national and European decision makers, in order to guarantee the success of the implementation of the ambitious conclusions of the special European Council meeting in Lisbon in March 2000.”3

The SOCRATES program is created in order to provide the stimulation for opening up to Europe of national policies on a complementary – and not an alternative – basis to the Member States. The aim is “to build up a Europe of knowledge based on more active policies with regard to lifelong learning gives the program the opportunity to stand as a powerful tool for implementing European and national policies on area of education.”4

At the beginning of implementing the SOCRATES program, 15 Member States and 3 European countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) were involved, followed

2 From articles 149 and 150 in the Treaty of Amsterdam, 1st May 1999 and Article 126 in the Treaty of Maastricht3 “Europe’s education and training systems need to adapt both to the demands of the knowledge society and to the need for an improved level and quality of employment. They will have to offer learning and training opportunities tailored to target groups at different stages of their lives: young people, unemployed adults and those in employment who are at risk of seeing their skills overtaken by rapid change. The new approach should have three main components: the development of local learning centers, the promotion of new basic skills, in particular in the information technologies, and increased transparency of qualifications”. – Article 2.5 from Education and training for living and working in the knowledge society, Presidency conclusions – Lisbon European Council, 23 and 24 March 20004 From the Final report from the Commission on the implementation of the Socrates programme 1995 - 1999

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since 1997 and 1998 by a number of states which have applied to join the EU (Cyprus, Romania, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia). In 1999 several countries signed the agreement with the Commission: Bulgaria, Slovenia and three Baltic States.

Having a budget, which represents less than 1% of the total Community budget, the SOCRATES program has set as priority target group the actors “whose action can generate a multiplier effect”. 5

From the Final report from the Commission on the implementation of the Socrates programme 1995 – 1999 we can summarize some results6: European dimension in studies in order to consolidate European citizenship

– “SOCRATES has played a pioneering role when it comes to integrating the education players from the point of view of European citizenship” (concerning mainly the countries of CEE)

Improvement of the knowledge of languages and the intercultural dimension – “Several transnational cooperation projects funded by the adult education action also set out to develop the intercultural dimension of education, in particular, through teaching modules of integration pathways for people in danger of being excluded as a result of their ethnic identity and for disadvantaged female groups”

Promotion of mobility and exchanges (students, teachers, pupils) – “mobility should evidently have been envisaged not as an end itself but as a means primarily intended to develop European citizenship”. “The impact of mobility is, moreover, very much dependant on problems concerning the recognition of diplomas and periods of study spend elsewhere.”

Cooperation between schools at all levels of teaching – “One of the main SOCRATES innovations is to have for the first time offered the whole of compulsory education the opportunity to take part in European cooperation actions which were hitherto restricted to higher education and the language field”

Encouraging the recognition of qualifications, periods of studies and other qualifications – “Accordingly the SOCRATES program contains two special arrangements: the ECTS (European credit transfer system) under Erasmus action 1 and the NARIC network (action III.3.4)”. “In the area of adult education, the recognition of achievements has not so far yielded the anticipated results. The question of validating professional achievement and experience must be given the place it deserves in the new phase of the program under the Grundtvig action for which the target is lifelong learning”.

Encouraging open and distance learning – focus on the “eEurope action plan, which is designed to make Europe the most competitive economy in the world and permit the emergence of a knowledge-based society.”

Promoting exchanges of information and experience – The Decision adopting the SOCRATES program had initially two priority themes: “the role of education for young people leaving the education system without enough qualifications” and “the evaluation of quality in the school system”, which were completed by “ongoing education” in 1997.

5 From the Final report from the Commission on the implementation of the Socrates programme 1995 - 19996 Accordingly to the nine objectives listed in Article 3 of the SOCRATES Decision – mentioned above

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Development of good quality education and training – “The promotion within the program of exchange of information and experience on the priority themes selected in agreement with the education committee has moreover undoubtedly made it possible to steer European cooperation to areas which can make a direct contribution to improving the quality of the national education systems, despite the small portion of the program budget allocated to this area”

The report concerning the implementation of the SOCRATES program in its initial stage was continued by other report, which analyzed the 7education systems. From the report from the Commission – The concrete future objectives of education systems we can point out the main concerns expressed by Member States:(1) QUALITY – a need to increase the quality of their (Member States) education and

training systems. This need refers to “the quality of the learning process both for young people and for adults; to the quality of the teaching process, with the implications for initial and in-service teacher training and of support to teachers and trainers dealing with disadvantaged groups or with adults; and to the quality of the instruments and teaching materials available to help people learn”

(2) ACCESS – develop access to learning at all stages of life, and in many cases mention a specific strategy regarding the development of lifelong learning.8 “They also stress the role which the education systems must play in developing social cohesion, and in attracting people with difficulties or from minorities into learning so that they can be enabled to play their full part in society.”

(3) CONTENT – reconsider the basic skills with which the young people should leave initial school or training

(4) OPENESS – the need for schools, training centers and universities to be open to the worlds: to increase their links with the local environment, to ensure an openness of spirit towards foreign countries, Europe and wider world

(5) EFFECTIVNESS – the education systems should make more use of quality assurance and evaluation systems in assessing their quality and becoming more effective in what they deliver; to ensure the best use of resources available; to direct investment in human and financial terms where it will be most useful.

The proposed concrete future objectives in the area of education are the following: Raising the standard of learning in Europe by improving Training for Teachers

and Trainers, and by increasing literacy and numeracy Making access to learning easier and more widespread at all times of life by

providing access to lifelong learning, by making learning more attractive, by creating internal coherence within education systems and by having education and social cohesion

Updating the definition of basic skills for the knowledge society by information and communication technologies for everyone (there are three challenges: equipping schools, training teachers and by creating networks and resources), by having professional skills and personal competencies, and specific skills

Opening education and training to the local environment, to Europe and the world by having foreign language teaching, by increasing mobility and exchanges, by strengthening links with business, by developing the spirit of enterprise for Europe to become “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-base economy in the

7 A society whose processes and practices are based on the production, distribution, and use of knowledge8 The SAERA project falls under the second main concern of the Commission in the field of education.

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world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion” (Lisbon)

Making the best use of resources by quality assurance systems and by matching resources to needs

Developing a new partnership with schools

In order to make the learning society a true reality, at Lisbon was suggested, “All actors in the educational process have to be ready to learn”. The mutual learning between the Member states is “a valuable way of increasing the quality of service delivered to citizen”. This defines the method for implementing the “open coordination” process.

From the analysis of national contributions describing Member Sates’ follow-up to the Lisbon and Feira Summits we summarize the following recommendations, which prove to be valuable for the SAERA project in the actual context of the educational system (we underline the key words for our project’s objectives): Schools and training centers, all linked to the Internet, should be developed into

multipurpose local learning centers accessible to all, using the most appropriate methods to address a wide range of target groups; learning partnerships should be established between schools, training centers, firms and research facilities for their mutual benefit

A European framework should define the new basic skills to provide through lifelong learning: IT skills, foreign languages, technological culture, entrepreneurship and social skills. 9

The lifelong learning is the main concept for the Grundtvig action, part of the SOCRATES program. On the 21st November 2001, the Commission adopted a Communication on Making a European Area of Lifelong learning a Reality. At Feira one of the main identified objective was “to identify coherent strategies and practical measures with a view to fostering lifelong learning for all”.

In order to train and educate people to meet the challenges of the knowledge-based society, the Communication has set the following issues as important for the future European area of lifelong learning:

Lifelong learning is broadly defined as the learning taking place in a broad range of setting, across the whole life span, and with a variety of aims

Building up coherent and comprehensive strategies in the lifelong learning area Develop concrete proposals that will include a “comprehensive new approach to

valuing learning, which will allow citizens to move freely between learning settings, jobs and countries, making the most of their knowledge and competencies”10

The implementation of European area of lifelong learning will be done through adapted structures, processes, programs and instruments.

9 Present as well in the Education and training for living and working in the knowledge society, Presidency conclusions – Lisbon European Council, 23 and 24 March 200010 From the official site of the Directorate of Education and Culture, http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/life/index.html

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http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/life/index.html


In the final document established by the Commission in November 2001 regarding the Making a European area of lifelong learning a Reality the lifelong learning concept has a broad definition as “the whole spectrum of formal11, non-formal12 and informal13 learning”14. This definition is detailed in “all learning activity undertaken throughout life, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competencies within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective”. In addition, the objectives of learning are “active citizenship15, personal fulfillment and social inclusion, as well as employment-related aspects”. “The principles which underpin lifelong learning and guide its effective implementation emphasize the centrality of the learner, the importance of equal opportunities and the quality and relevance of learning opportunities.”

At the Feira European Council in the European Employment Strategy agreed, “to develop and implement coherent and comprehensive strategies for lifelong learning”. “The clear message is that traditional systems must be transformed to become more open and flexible, so that learners can have individual learning pathways, suitable to their needs and interests, and thus genuinely take advantage of equal opportunities throughout their lives”.

The key words for the strategy are “partnership approach”, “needs of the learner”, “adequate resourcing”, “facilitate access”, “culture of learning”, and “striving for excellence”.

The coherent and comprehensive lifelong learning strategies should include the sharing of roles and responsibilities.

“The following description is indicative only: actors’ roles and responsibilities vary accordingly to different national and other practices, systems and contexts. Lifelong learning partnerships at all levels should consider and develop such roles and responsibilities in the light of circumstances.

Public authorities are responsible for providing the necessary resources for, and ensuring access for all citizens to compulsory education and training and post-compulsory basic skills provision, as well as ensuring the pre-school and adult learning opportunities are available. In addition, they must take the lead in developing and implementing lifelong learning strategies at all levels. This includes ensuring the right of citizens to have access to opportunities for acquiring and updating knowledge and competencies throughout life (as set out in the preamble to the Amsterdam Treaty), with the assistance of guiding services. Public authorities are also

11 Learning typically provided by an education or training institution, structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support) and leading to certification. Formal learning is intentional from the learner’s perspective. 12 Learning that is not provided by any education or training institutions and typically does not lead to certification. It is, however, structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support). Non-formal learning is intentional from the learner’s perspective.13 Learning resulting from daily life activities related to work, family or leisure, It is not structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support) and typically does not lead to certification. Informal learning may be intentional but in most case it is non-intentional (or “incidental”/random)14 From the Executive Summary of the European area of lifelong learning a Reality15 The cultural, economic, political/democratic and/or social participation of citizens in society as a whole and their community

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responsible for active labor market measures for unemployed and promoting learning for all, both in- and outside the labor market. Employers have the main responsibility to provide for developing the competencies of their workforce and are increasingly taking on wider corporate social responsibilities, for example when they open up training opportunities and resources for wider public. Trade unions increasingly deliver learning to their members, and participate in activities to promote and facilitate learning amongst members and non-members alike. Together, the social partners conduct social dialogue at all levels, and negotiate and implement agreements in respect of education and training in the workplace. Learning providers of all kinds have a responsibility for the quality and relevance of their learning provision, as well as it coherence within the overall learning offer. Community and voluntary groups have unique opportunities to deliver targeted learning, to promote learning amongst (potential) learners and to articulate their needs and interests. All actors share a responsibility to work together on lifelong learning (…) and to support individuals in taking responsibility for their own learning.”

All activities of the project are based on the use of information and communication technologies and have as guiding lines the lifelong learning principles.16

With the new technology playing a vital role in the implementation of the lifelong learning issues, we are trying to speed up the process of moving towards a Europe as a knowledge-based society. EEurope is “a roadmap to modernise our economy. At the same time, through its eLearning component, it offers everyone, but particularly young people, the skills and tools they need to succeed in the new knowledge based economy” (Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission)

The SAERA project aims to develop a strategy for adult education in the rural areas through the means of TeleCenters and by establishing partnerships at local and European level.

Therefore we have introduced the concept of TeleCenter inside the project in order to implement the developed strategy.

The TELECENTER (TELECOTAGE) is the place in the community the continuous education policies for adults will be implemented through counselling, information, and guiding towards different forms of education, organization and implementation of certain education modules. The TeleCenters are equipped with computers, printers, photocopy machines, telephones and connected to the Internet facilitating access to information distance learning. The adults in rural areas will be educated in the spirit of using these modern methods of communication and information as an information source and possibility of education.

“The broader long-term aim outlined by the Commission in its Communication on Making a European Area of Lifelong Learning a Reality is to enable people to meet the challenges of the knowledge-based society by promoting the development of their knowledge skills and competencies at all stages of their lives. Citizens should be empowered to use their knowledge and experience, and pursue learning or employment opportunities, anywhere in the EU, on the basis of what they can do and

16 Lifelong learning: All learning undertaken throughout life, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competences within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective.

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not where they acquired their abilities and qualifications. The European programs Leonardo da Vinci and Socrates / Grundtvig have been key in supporting lifelong learning and the development of transnational vocational education and training. The identification, assessment and recognition of ‘non-formal learning’ should also be enhanced in order to enable citizens to build on their knowledge and competencies gained outside the formal education and training system.”

Another key element for our project is rural, which is defined by Webster as “Of or pertaining to the country, as distinguished from a city or town” and by The advanced learner’s dictionary of current English, Oxford as “In, of, characteristic of, suitable for the country (opp. Of urban)”.

The rural areas are considered a priority region for Europe and in the Council regulation no 1257/1999 on support for rural development we found the following statement: “Whereas, given the diversity of the community’s rural areas, rural development policy should follow the principle of subsidiary; whereas it should therefore, be as decentralized as possible and emphasis must be on participation and a ‘bottom up’ approach”.17 The developments should “be encouraged and supported by reorganization and simplification of the existing rural development instruments.” In the countries which have developed the concept of TeleCenter, it has prove to be a useful tool for durable development, therefore we will use it in order to implement our strategies and by reorganize it as a multipurpose local learning center. One of the recommendations regarding training is “support for vocational training (…) improvement of the occupational skills and competencies”, having in mind the fact that the investment in human resources provides a sustainable rural development.

In the Communication from the Commission to the Council on the Compendium providing policy guidelines in specific areas or sectors of co-operation to be approved by the Community within the ACP-EC Council of Ministers the chapter regarding Agricultural and Rural Development presents some perspectives on the topic.

“Rural development is an overarching concept which encompasses most sectors of political, economic and social activity. The social and economic development of rural areas is at the heart of sustainable development and poverty eradication. Co-operation will, therefore, aim at improving rural well being as a contribution to sustained poverty reduction. It shall promote sector policies and strategies to achieve economic growth and equitable social development based on sustainable natural resource management.

In order to stimulate the rural economy and to link it to the national development efforts, co-operation shall focus on the development of multisectorial rural strategies18

aimed at establishing a strategic framework for decentralized planning and resources allocation and management. Such strategies shall bring together the social, economic and environmental dimension of rural development. To increase their

17 Article 1418 The Strategy for Adult education in rural areas could be included in the education sector at European level.

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http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/leonardo/leonardo2_en.html


relevance and impact, they shall be designed and implemented in a participatory way.19

To ensure meaningful participation of civil society20 in the strategic process and enhance the role of women, attention in the design and implementation of strategies shall be paid to ensure that adequate measures are included to promote inter alia:a) The organization, empowerment and capacity building of producers and local

communities in order for them to become active partners in the planning and implementation processes;

b) The full participation of women and the recognition of the active role they play as full partners in the rural production and economic development processes;

c) The availability and equal access to social and economic services (12rganizat extension) in rural areas, for both men and women;

d) The development of capacity in local and central administration including training of staff

e) The sustainable participatory management of common natural resources; andf) The decentralization of planning and implementation of sectorial budgets and the

enhancement of local capacity to improve the effectiveness and transparency of financial and human resource management”

The rural development process is linked with the education and training process. A well-educated and skilled workforce contributes directly to improve the local development and to increase the living standards of the population. “Properly designed, targeted and executed education and training projects and programs can also be effective in removing impediments in the way of people living useful and productive lives in their own community.”21

“In order to meet immediate and foreseeable education and training needs, c-operation shall (…):a) Set up and expand training and educational establishments, particularly those of

a regional nature;b) Restructure their educational establishments and systems, update curricula,

methods and technologies employed and reform their basic educational institutions and systems, in particular by providing overall primary education coverage and adjusting imported systems as well as incorporating them into development strategies;

c) Encourage educational and training operations proper, notably literacy programs and programs of non-traditional forms of training, for functional and vocational purposes as well as components of program that enhance the potential and status of illiterate people;

d) (…) Promote and support the participation and integration of women into education and training and give less advantaged sectors of the population in rural areas access to education and training

19 The partnership instrument used in the project.20 A ‘third sector’ of society alongside the state and the market, which embraces the institutions, groups, and associations (either structured or informal), and which may act as mediator between the public authorities and citizens. 21 From the Social and Human development chapter in the Communication from the Commission to the Council on the Compendium providing policy guidelines in specific areas or sectors of co-operation to be approved by the Community within the ACP-EC Council of Ministers

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e) Stimulate training of instructors, educational planners and specialists in educational technology, including the provision of relevant educational materials; and

f) Initiate associations, twining, exchanges and transfers of teachers, students and information and technology between universities and institutions (…)”

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CHAPTER 2NATIONAL CONTEXTS

The Commission motto for lifelong learning is one Chinese proverb: “When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.” (Guanzi, 645BC)

Definition of ADULT EDUCATION

The term 'adult education' denotes the entire body of organized educational processes, whatever the content, level and method, whether formal or otherwise, whether they prolong or replace initial education in schools, colleges and universities as well as in apprenticeship, whereby persons regarded as adult by the society to which they belong develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, improve their technical or professional qualifications or turn them in a new direction and bring about changes in their attitudes or behavior in the twofold perspective of full personal development and participation in balanced and independent social, economic and cultural development;

Adult education, however, must not be considered as an entity in itself; it is a subdivision, and an integral part of, a global scheme for life-long education and learning;

The term 'life-long education and learning', for its part, denotes an overall scheme aimed both at restructuring the existing education system and at developing the entire educational potential outside the education system;

In such a scheme men and women are the agents of their own education, through continual interaction between their thoughts and actions;

Education and learning, far from being limited to the period of attendance at school, should extend throughout life, include all skills and branches of knowledge, use all possible means, and give the opportunity to all people for full development of the personality;

The educational and learning processes in which children, young people and adults of all ages are involved in the course of their lives, in whatever form, should be considered as a whole.

(RECOMMENDATION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ADULT EDUCATION, 1976)

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ROMANIA

Administration

Administratively, the rural area is comprised of 2686 communes incorporating 13 thousand villages. It is very different from urban area by economic activities, occupations and factors of production. It also is very heterogeneous, with tiny human settlements and larger communities, densely populated areas and isolated villages and hamlets, rich communities and poor communities. However, the rural area is particularly important to Romania – in both economic and social terms: it accounts for 45% of the country’s population, 47% of housing and 46% of the living space. In this respect, Romania is unlike either its neighbors or EU countries where only 23% of the total are rural population. In Romania, 89% of the country’s surface area and 91% of its farmland area is under rural community administration. With 48 people per sq. km., the rural area is more sparsely populated than the urban area (where the figure is 480).

Economy

The rural area lags behind the urban one – socially and economically. Primary productive activities prevail in rural area: farming, forestry and fishing. By contrast, secondary and tertiary production – manufacturing industries, trade and other services are dominant in urban area. Food processing and extraction industry are the most common industrial activity in rural area. This difference in economic activities also extends to occupations: most of the economically active population in rural area is self-employed farmers, unlike in urban area where employees cut the biggest share. It should, however, be said that while entrepreneurship measured by the proportion of employers in total economically active population is low in both areas, it is almost nil in the rural area, where less than one-fifth of all Romanian employers are located. These differences are apparent in Table 1.

Table 1. Differences in occupational status by area of residence

Occupational status % of total, by area

% of total, by category

Urban Rural Urban RuralEmployee 91.0 32.7 72.5 27.5Employer 2.3 0.4 85.8 14.2Self-employed 4.7 34.7 11.3 88.7Family worker 1.9 31.5 5.5 94.5Member of agricultural company or non-ag. Cooperative

0.1 0.7 10.1 89.9

TOTAL 100.0 100.0 48.7 51.3(Source: CNS – Labor Force Participation Survey, 1997)

Education

Differences in occupational status are, in their turn, linked to different educational achievements and skills in the two areas. The education level in rural areas is lower

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than in urban areas (see Table 2.). The working population with no formal schooling or with just primary education makes up 27.6% in rural area, which contrasts with a low 2.6% in urban area. On the other hand, higher school graduates are concentrated in the urban area where 90% of their total live.

Table 2. Education level of working population by area

Total % of total, by area % of total, by categoryUrban100.0

Rural100.0

Urban48.7

Rural51.3

No formal schooling 0.3 3.3 8.0 92.0Primary school 2.3 24.3 8.4 91.6Lower secondary school 10.3 31.2 23.7 76.3Lower high school 5.1 8.2 37.0 63.0Vocational school 24.7 17.4 54.7 42.6Upper high school 34.0 12.8 71.7 28.3Specialty post-high school 8.0 1.3 85.3 14.7Long-course university 6.4 0.8 87.9 12.1Short-course university 8.9 0.7 92.9 7.1

Resources in the two areas basically determine both economic activities and occupations. The rural area makes intensive use of primary resources: land, forests and the subsoil. By land ownership, rural residents own some 80% of all farmland and operate an even higher percentage of agricultural and holdings. Livestock ownership is almost 100% in rural area. By contrast, rural ownership of production equipment, industrial construction, and infrastructure is far below the urban level.

Infrastructure

There are similar differences in access to physical and social infrastructure between rural and urban area (see Table 3). The share of rural area in the total drinking water and gas distribution network is smaller than its share of total population. The shortfall is particularly wide for the sewage system: only as little as 6% of its total length is in rural area. As concerns social services, with the exception of classrooms, the rural area suffers from a chronic shortfall of health care infrastructure and personnel. The disparity is even wider in terms of quality, and for secondary – lower and upper – education and secondary health care services. Access to communications, to telephone services in particular, is four times more reduced in rural area.

Table 3. Indicators of physical and social infrastructure

Rural UrbanPopulation total 45% 55%

Physical infrastructure - % by rural/urban areaLength of drinking water distribution network – km 38% 62%Length of gas distribution network – km 31% 69%Length of sewage system – km 6% 94%

Social infrastructure – in 1000 people

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School units 2.1 0.7Teaching staff 10.3 16.8Classrooms and school laboratories 5.6 5.4Hospital and dispensary beds 2.0 14.7Medical staff (doctors and nurses) 2.5 12.1

Communications – in 1000 peopleRadio and local radio subscribers 147.2 231.5TV subscribers 116.4 233.5Individual telephone units 40.8 161.3

Population

On the other hand, the rural area is very heterogeneous. Average figures, used to illustrate the rural-urban disparity, tell nothing about this heterogeneity that has its roots in the wide diversity of economic, geographic and socio-cultural conditions in rural area. There are large rural communities comparable in size with towns, such as Voluntari in Ilfov County with a population of 27 thousand inhabitants, and small communities with a little over one hundred inhabitants, such as Brebu Nou in Caras-Severin County. Furthermore, the landholdings managed by a community may vary within wide limits: Murighiol commune in Constanta county holds over 80 thousand hectares of land, which contrasts with the one thousand hectares held by Doicesti commune in Dambovita county. And this wide diversity of resources and living standards may grow wider if we take our analysis further down to villages.

The major characteristics of rural population are: it is shrinking, aging and less educated than urban population. All these are more frequent phenomena determinants in small rural communities far away from urban areas. By geographic region, the population drop is more significant in the south of the country and in western Transylvania, with aging affecting roughly the same parts of the country. The counties with lower education levels are concentrated in the Northeast and South border counties.

All these characteristics have direct rural development implications. We assume that the living standards are determined by:

The quality of human resources (approximated by education level); Opportunities for households to make good use of their factors of production

(approximated by location and distance to city); Other factors linked to rural community size.

By assumption, lower household living standards can be linked to lower educational achievements. Also, the living standard of a rural community can be linked to its size and proximity to large urban communities as essential prerequisites for households to make better use of their factors of production, which vary, inversely proportional with transport costs and proportional with the size of local and urban market. Finally, the geographic regions with shrinking population, lower birth rates, and rising death rates and out migration may be in this position precisely because of falling living standards and our measure may be a proxy for the lower welfare areas.

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Labor

Labor is one of the key resources for rural development. In any causal model, the available human resources will influence the standard of living, by the size and quality of labor. To know what the current development level of rural area is like we must know the size and structure of its labor resources, the range of rural occupations, by activity and education level, and labor distribution by geographic region.

The activity rate is higher and unemployment lower in rural area (Table 4). The activity rate in rural area in the three years surveyed was by some 10-percentage points higher than in urban area. Differences were even bigger with the labor force participation rate (14.6 per cent age points in 1997). The rural unemployment rate – as defined by ILO – trailed the urban rate by some 5-percentage points during the same period of time.

Table 4. Activity rate and unemployment rate by area of residence

Activity Rate Labor Force Participation

Unemployment Rate

Total Rural Urban Total Rural Urban Total Rural Urban1995 66.0 73.0 60.0 60.7 69.6 53.1 8.0 4.7 11.41996 64.8 69.9 60.5 60.4 66.9 55.0 6.7 4.3 9.21997 64.8 71.5 59.3 60.9 68.9 54.3 6.0 3.6 8.4

By age groups, the working rate is far higher in rural area for the young (15-24 years) and the elderly (over 50). This is something worth stressing. As can be seen in Figure 1, the proportion of young people in work is 61.9% in rural area vs. 37.4% in urban area. As concerns the elderly, only 5.5% of the people of retirement age (65 years and over) in urban area are working, unlike in rural area where the working people in this group account for a high 52%.

Figure 1. Activity rate of adult population, by age group and areas of residence

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The structure of the working population in Table 5 reflects the average for each area of residence. In Romania’s rural areas, there are wide disparities in the occupational structure from commune to commune. There are communities where industry and the tertiary sector lack altogether, and agriculture accounts 100 percent of employment. Such communities are expected to add lower value per labor unit, an assumption that would be tested in Chapter Three. The primary sector prevails in the East and South West (Table 6) In these regions, more than three quarters of the rural population is working in agriculture, with industry and services accounting for a small share only (10%-12%).

Table 5. Structure of active population, by sector and area of residence

1995 1996 1997Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban

Active population in: Thousand 5900 5252 5546 5390 5673 5377Agriculture % 69.8 7.2 68.4 6.7 69.8 6.5

Industry % 16.7 47.1 17.0 46.4 16.1 45.7Services % 13.5 45.8 14.6 46.9 14.1 47.8

Table 6. Structure of the active rural population by sector and region

Region As % of total employedAgriculture Industry and construction Services

North-East 78.9 10.8 10.3South-East 74.6 12.8 12.6South 64.4 21.2 14.4South-West 75.2 12.6 12.2West 67.9 14.0 18.1North-West 68.2 16.9 14.9Central 59.1 24.0 16.9Bucharest, Ilfov 30.3 39.2 30.5

A Rural Development Report (Urban Project/PHARE, 1998) presents two maps that use the existence or non-existence of industrial activities in rural communities as a measure for rural occupational diversity. The first is a map of industrial activities in rural area, which shows that more complex rural industrial activities are concentrated in two counties, Suceava and Timis, and that some other industrial activities are located in a few communities in the counties of Satu-Mare, Bihor, Mures, Brasov, Covasna, Harghita, Gorj, Olt, Arges, Dâmbovita, Constanta. Most of the units operated in these communities are in the mining and food processing industries. The second map identifies the existence or non-existence of food processing in rural communities. This industry is strongly represented in Suceava, Vaslui, Constanta, Arges, Dolj, Timis and Olt counties.

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Transport and Communications Infrastructure

The rural area also has to cope with a shortage of public transport and communications infrastructure that would help the delivery of appropriate services.

As far as transport is concerned, we would first refer to public roads – of county and community significance –, which measured 58,478 km and accounted for four-fifths of the country’s public roads in mid-1997.

Of that total, just under one half (47 per cent) were county roads and 53 per cent were community roads. A very low percentage – 7.7 per cent of county roads and 3.1 per cent of community roads – was rehabilitated with more than two-fifths being cobbled roads. We may add that nearly three-fifths of community roads were cobbled, but there were still a quarter of them that were unpaved.

In as much as rural access to national roads is concerned, it should be said that only about half of all rural communities (1462) – and about three-fifths of the rural population – had direct access to the main road network. The density of county and community roads in the territory was also low: at end- 1997, there were 27.3 km of roads in 100 sq. km of rural area.

As concerns communications, post and telephone-telegraph offices in rural area fail to meet demand.

In 1997 there were 7214 rural post offices or 90 per cent of all Romanian Post offices. Adding to them were 9805 mailboxes whose number dropped by 6.8 per cent in 1997, a drop that caused a compression of postal services in rural area. Postal offices are particularly few in five counties in the South.

Telephone and telegraph services in rural area were provided by 2182 offices, or some four fifths of all units delivering such services; their numbers also had dropped in the previous year by 50 units (2.2 per cent).

Telephone units in rural area at the end of 1997 totaled 530 thousand, to account for 13.4 per cent of the country’s total but for just 52 units in 1000 rural people (the total includes telephone units of public telephone offices and legal entities in addition to those of households). Only in 1160 rural communities (or 43 per cent of their total) are telephone services available to every constituent village; in one-fifth of the rural communities less than one half of their constituent villages have access to telephone services. Finally, access to radio and TV programs is not provided to rural households on a large scale (even though almost all rural communities have access to electricity).

Acquis

“At the beginning of the third millennium, Romania has legislation, institutions and educational, vocational and training policies according to the one in the European Union.”22

22 The Ministry of European Integration, 2000 – Reporting Document (18th chapter of the acquis communautaire)

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Education became on the main fields in Romanian society which passed the accession negotiations exam with the European Union, the 18 th chapter being provisionally closed in May 2000.

Regarding the adult education field, there are no specific requirements for Romania in the “acquis communautaire”. Nevertheless, there are aspects related to the vocational training for adults, which should be taken into consideration by our country in order to achieve the harmonization of actions and policies in the European educational field.

“Through the participation at the European programs (as stated in the decision of Consiliul de Asociere Romania – UE nr. 2 / 1997, the Association Board Romania – EU) in the field of Education, vocational training and youth (Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Youth for Europe) Romania proved to have the institutional capacity to achieve a viable partnership for the EU initiatives in the field.Romanian legislation in the field of education is compatible with the European Community decision, resolutions and declarations, as the ones regarding the equal opportunities, ensuring the mobility for higher education, foreign languages education, European dimension, school security, non-discrimination, educational techniques usage, open distance learning, continuous education etc.Romania made significant progress in the field of education and vocational training, through adoption recent legislation regarding the European Community policies in the areas of education and vocational training (Board decision nr. 63/226/EC), including adult training organization, entrepreneurship vocational training, second chance school and a pilot program to overcome professional and social exclusion of young drop outs.The social partners have been directly involved in the continuous vocational training and a certification system has been included in order to attest the graduates qualification.Regarding continuous vocational training, through the creation of a three dimensioned structure, there were established cooperation forms among social partners at local and national level as well.”23

In 1999, a National Board for Adult Vocational Training was established, with a role to attest the policies and strategies in the field of continuous vocational training, by analyzing the legislative framework in order to assure a coherent process.

In May 2001, the Education and Research Ministry together with the Labour and Solidarity Ministry have elaborated the basic principles to introduce a unitary legislative framework to promote a single initiative that will harmonize the existent requirements regarding the continuous vocational training.

Nevertheless, The European Commission Report 2001 regarding the adoption of the “acquis communautaire” in Romania states: “the absence of a structured vocational training system for adults”. The same report declares: “A coherent system should

23 The Ministry of European Integration, 2000 – Reporting Document (18th chapter of the acquis communautaire)

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urgently be established and this will require intensified cooperation between all concerned authorities: education, labor, and the social partners.”24

Adult education

Overview

If until 1989 AE was mostly a mass centralized phenomenon, in the last ten years the main treat of AE was the change to decentralized and flexible offers of AE. The changes were explosive, incoherent and anarchic because of the lack of a coherent governmental strategy in this field.

Neither from theoretical point of view is there any official definition regarding AE. There is no clear distinction between adult education and continuing education and sometimes even lifelong education and learning.

The general accepted definition of AE is that AE concludes all educational activities that are made after the initial formal education. At the theoretical and practical level there is no distinction between AE and continuing education (CE), even if AE has mostly cultural, general connotations, and CE is connected mostly with professional issues of AE. In fact these two terms are used synonymously.

AE is provided by different institutions, with the main purposes: getting new professional competencies and improving/updating existing skills, professional reconversion, social reconversion for 22rganization people, improving general culture and knowledge etc.

In order to understand the actual situation of AE in Romania, it is important to analyze its evolution in the last ten years. If 22rgan 1989 AE was developed mostly for cultural reasons, sometimes with strong ideological connotations, nowadays the most important dimension of AE is the professional training due to a lot of changes in the labor market and in job profiles. The number of providers for further vocational education has been increasing in this period, but there were nongovernmental institutions providing educational support for social reconversion for marginalized people, for aged persons.

The state has created the framework for the decentralization and a more flexible offer, but didn’t give enough financial support and the economical difficulties of the transition to a democratic society influenced the development of AE too. Since the state accepts and encourages plurality, the whole structure of adult education has been allowed to freely develop, and has become widely differentiated. In many fields it is only indirectly affected by state regulations or subventions.

Beside financial obstacle, the development of AE has known a lot of limits due to the lack of specialists in AE, the lack of necessary researches in this field for scientific approaches, and in general, because of a non coherent national policy for developing this field. These limits tend to be solved step by step, and after a period of general decreasing of AE in the first three-four years of the last decade, the situations seems

24 European Commission, 2001 - Romania – Adoption of the Community Acquis

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to be better from one year to the other, but there are still a lot of difficulties to cope with.

Historical Background

The first point to be made is that AE has a long and fruitful tradition in Romania. A historical analysis leads to the identification of four stages that, in spite of their qualitative difference, follow each other in a logical succession: The initial period of AE, which outlines certain beginnings (very often insufficiently

delineated and without a clear-cut specificity). This period is the longest one, with a long tradition in our history, but with the most important developments in the XIXth century;

The stage aimed at establishing and defining AE as a distinct domain, both from an institutional and a conceptual point of view. This period covers the beginning of our century, till the Second World War, with one of the richest achievements for the developing of AE in Romania.

The stage with a certain decreasing of AE in Romania which covers the communist period. In this period AE has mostly ideological connotations, it is a mass phenomenon, with a developed institutional network, but based on a continuing decrease of the scientific research and approaches in this field.

The stage covering the last twelve years, with the reaffirmation, the building up and the developing of AE in Romania, but with a difficult transition and adaptation at the modern and actual international approaches and development in AE.

A second essential point is the existence of a synchronism between preoccupations in Romania and European efforts in the adult education field. As we shall see later, this synchronism can be identified not only on a time scale but also, and more important, on a conceptual level.

The first institutions that were created even at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century mainly aimed at raising the cultural level of the people, especially in the rural areas. Gradually they came to assume educational functions or the help in the dissemination of professional knowledge (particularly to peasants). This fact turned the school into an institution directly involved in adult education activities. The school thus became a center of instruction and culture for adults, especially in rural areas.

A final comment refers to the theory-practice relationship in the field of adult education during its incipient stage. Although we can talk about the existence of a relative concordance between the two domains, a proper synchronism is excluded. In most cases practice (i.e. institutional) in the field of adult education preceded theoretical conceptualizations. Ideas about adult education were most often implicit, being stated in the practical activities of the respective institutions. Most of these ideas were closely linked to the assertion of national, cultural, and egalitarian ideals, which is easy to understand in the given social and historical context. But the ideas that substantiated adult education from a more rigorous psycho-pedagogical perspective crystallized later on.

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Several institutions, which were devoted to adult education and the ideas they relied on, as well as some personalities whose names are linked to these achievements, are described below.

The Transylvanian Association for the Promotion of Romanian Literature and of the Romanian People’s Culture (ASTRA)

Founded in 1861, its basic aims were of a cultural and educational nature and were targeted at adults, especially in rural areas, who were either illiterate or had not finished their education. The cultural circles, set up in urban and rural localities, were the main means of the “cultural advancement” of these adults. These societies organized popular conferences and lectures for the “dissemination of good knowledge in all directions” among all categories of the population (peasants, girls and women, etc.).

One of the major achievements of these cultural societies was the creation of the rural cultural centers as institutions for the education of adults, which are still functioning (although their educational goals and means have, naturally, greatly changed). These cultural centers are provided with various facilities such as libraries and ethnographic museums, allowing them to organize both educational and cultural activities.

ASTRA is therefore one of the first associations created for adult education purposes in Romania. Its present-day objectives are mainly cultural.

The ‘Romanian Atheneum’ Society

This national society was founded in Bucharest in 1865. Its predecessor had been set up in Iasi in 1861, headed by V.A. Urechia, who was also the editor of the Romanian Atheneum Review. However, this society in Iasi stopped its activity in the same year.

The “Romanian Athenaeum Society” was aimed at fulfilling two major purposes: the achievement of further basic education and the dissemination of cultural and scientific knowledge. These activities were mainly intended for adults. The “Romanian Athenaeum” created the “Society for the Education of the Romanian People” in order to make popular “education among the Romanians by all possible means.” Several schools functioned in the framework of this Society, a fact that illustrates its direct involvement in the education of adults, being the first society to assume overtly and systematically responsibilities in the adult education field.

The following types of schools were set up: Schools for adult students, in which “those grown-ups who had not enjoyed the

advantages of education could learn writing, reading, arithmetic, outlines of the counter’s history and geography”.

Vocational schools, in which, besides literacy activities, further training courses in specific trades were organized.

Vocational commercial schools, which developed activities, aimed at improving knowledge in the commercial field.

Teacher training schools, for the training of the primary school teachers.

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Thus the “Society for the Education of the Romanian People” initiated and developed types of activities that are included even in present day educational and instructional programs devised for adult students (literacy programs, further education and updating courses, etc.)

Casa Şcoalelor

An approximate English translation would be “The House of Schools.” Although it is an extension of all previously mentioned institutions, the “Casa Şcoalelor” is the first institution with explicit responsabilities in the adult education field. This was achieved by extending the functions of the school from the education and the instruction of children to adult teaching activities.

The institution was set up in 1896. At the beginning it fulfilled organisational functions in the building and equipment for schools. After only one year, at the time when Spiru Haret was Minister of Education (he made major contributions to the modernisation of the Romanian educational system), the “Casa Şcoalelor” took on new responsabilities. It became, in fact, an institution for adult education and culture. One of Haret’s basic convictions was that the school should become a centre for the education of all age-groups. This situation was particulary characteristic for rural areas, were the population suffered many deprivations and the illiteracy rate was high. One of the means for eradicating the latter was the setting-up of the village libraries, the main purpose of which was to help the local population to assimilate knowledge at the general educational and vocational level.

In order to ensure these village libraries’ prestige and high standards, Spiru Haret sought the support of many personalities of the time – writers, poets, university professors. From among them, G. Coşbuc and A. Vlahuţă deserve particular mention, being two of the best-known and highly-respected writers of the period. Primary teachers living in the villages played an essential role in the dissemination of knowledge, the main depository being the village libraries.

Another way of extending cultural circles – the seed of many institutions which, in a diversity of forms and contents, exists in Romania to this day – were activities aimed at promoting adult education, ranging from general and civic education to vocational training intended for peasants to improve their knowledge in the field of agriculture and animal breeding. These circles carried out systematic activities and, in time, they came to be concerned with research and knowledge of ethnography and folklore of the country, supplying information that was later included in the research devoted to this topic.

Spiru Haret, the initiator and organizer of these institutions, was in more ways one of the founders in the adult education field. He knew the experience of the Scandinavian countries in the field very well (especially that of Denmark), for which he had a high regard. In his activity he tried to put this experience into practice, conferring upon it a national dimension which resulted from the specificity of the Romanian villages. The idea about the social and cultural mission of the school as an institution that should concentrate all educational efforts of a given place seems to us very important, from the present day perspective. As well known, this idea lay at the

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basis of the subsequent development of the idea about the community school. Spiru Haret also encouraged publications devoted to adults.

The Romanian Social Institute

The RSI is the one of the institutes with responsibilities in various fields besides education. It was the most important institutional embodiment of what was called “The Bucharest School of Sociology”, the founder of which was the sociologist Dimitrie Gusti. The Institute was created to promote and develop research in the field of sociology and to confer on it a more evident empirical character. At the sociological investigations level proper, great attention was paid to educational issues, which became the principal concern of RSI in many aspects.

The ideas stated and the methods put into practice in the framework of the Institute are directly connected with Gusti’s socio-pedagogical conception while he headed the Institute.

The object of concern of all social and educational activities undertaken by the Institute was the village, i.e. the upgrading of the peasants’ cultural level. Gusti’s basic assumption was that any measures or steps aimed at getting a particular issue right should be preceded by an empirical study in order to identify the real needs as far as culture and education were concerned. The means or method leading to this knowledge is the sociological monograph. Why was this preliminary identification of cultural and educational needs so necessary? Because adult-centered educational activities should be conceived in the light of these needs, as an answer to these expectations. Thus their efficiency and causality increase and so do the adult’s acceptance and participation in the educational process. Moreover, the best means of action can be determined on this basis.

In the opinion of the initiator of the RSI, the basic educational establishment was the rural cultural center (and attached library) which organized systematic, multi-purpose activities such as educational activities aimed at eradicating illiteracy or at providing further education, basic vocational training (especially in the field of farm management and agricultural economics), or activities concerning health, care and hygiene.

An entirely original characteristic of experience acquired by the RSI was the student’s involvement in adult education activities. Students from various faculties were grouped into interdisciplinary teams and participated, during their holidays or training stages, in large-scale educational work.

Here it should be stressed that Gusti was familiar with Grundtvig’s “popular universities” in Denmark. In a public lecture entitled ‘Cultural Policy and the Cultural State’, delivered in 1928, Gusti wondered:

…whether in Romania such higher schools for peasants could be created, according to the Grundtving’s model, without blindly imitating the latter but turning it into a specific Romanian school, adapted to the real needs of the Romanian peasants and villages, designed to meet national and state demands characteristic only of the Romanian rural society.

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Within the RSI the “popular schools” for the education of adults were set up intending to train both mind and body, to provide civic, artistic, economic and vocational education.

People’s Universities

The activities carried out by the above-mentioned educational and cultural associations or societies gradually evolved and developed into an institutional form, known under the name of “people’s universities.”These institutions were called to undertake systematic activities, explicitly oriented towards adult education. There have been numerous such universities but the most famous is the Summer University at Valenii de Munte (the Prahova County), created in 1922 and headed by its founder, the historian Nicolae Iorga. (A fact worth to mention is that, after a long period of interruption during the dictatorship years, the university has resumed its activities). Nicolae Iorga was one of the Romanian scientists, who initiated and supported many cultural and educational establishments, the activities of which centered on adult education in rural areas. He himself organized numerous conferences and delivered lectures on various topics, all aimed at raising the educational level of the peasants.

Some of his remarkable ideas concerning the adult education process are worth mentioning. The idea on which his entire practical approach is build concerns out-of-school adult education, achieved by informal means such as libraries, museums, theatres, cultural societies and people’s university. Iorga mentioned this idea in a suggestive way: “education breeds education” mingling with society in order to dominate it. This assertion proves that he was aware of the relationship between school and out-of-school education.

He clearly saw that school was only one part of the individual’s existence, and that the latter’s education did not end with leaving school but continued long after that, throughout life. People’s universities fill this post-school educational need. Iorga invited well known personalities in various fields such as literature, economics, agriculture, and medicine to participate at the activities organized within the Summer University at Valenii de Munte.

People’s universities expanded greatly in the inter-war period, serving as a model for the cultural universities founded after World War II, the main concern of which was adult education.

After the World War II the network of adult education institutions was increasing, the cultural houses, people’s universities, sindical houses, etc. had mostly activities for leisure and general education, but sometimes were tools for ideological propaganda. All of them belonged to the Ministry of Culture. The vocational education was made mostly formally, once at five years, but it wasn’t a real problem as far as we had no unemployed people, all of them had the job for their entire career.

The practical activities for adult learners in the Ministry of Education institutions network didn’t know the same extension. Here was made the main research work,

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but starting with the early 80’s this was decreasing too because the faculties of educational sciences, sociology and psychology were forbidden and no specialists graduated. We can feel the effects of this fact after the revolution, because we don’t have enough specialists for this field and there hasn’t been any scientific research and activity for more then ten years. It is understandable why at the Ministry of Education nowadays AE became an official distinct field of interests only at the beginning of 1998, when was established the National Council for Continuing Education.

Legal bases

The legislative support (Law no. 2/1971 concerning the “further training” of adults) although abolished in practice has not been formally replaced with a new, comprehensive legislative regulation. The main objectives of adult further training (as stipulated in the 1971 Law) were the following: Up-dating and enrichment of professional, scientific and technical knowledge. Obtaining of a supplementary qualification (besides the basic one). Changing of qualification in keeping with the need for adjustment to professional

mobility.

From an institutional point of view, one can mention: In-service training institutes and centers organized by ministries and departments,

the activities of which were coordinated in cooperation with the Ministry of Education

Upgrading courses organized within universities, such as postqualification courses or doctoral studies, which have a strong academic character and are not strictly correlated with the intermediate needs of the given professional activity.

The system in spite of some successes had significant limitations (partially corrected at present), namely its quasi-centralized character. The compulsories of professional retraining every five years, which was not aimed at real but assumed needs, ensuring a higher salary category for the candidate but not a real professional upgrading; the excessively general, uniform and imposed character of the content, contradictory to the local and specific needs of the respective enterprises and of the various socio-professional categories; evaluation of the results by means of quasi-traditional methods; lack of efficiency, marked ideologisation were some of its limitations in application.

Now, at the governmental level, a new global and coherent policy pertaining to adults and their education (particularly vocational) is being elaborated, but we still have no explicit law for AE. We only have some specifications about this, but not enough to develop a strong system for CE in Romania. For instance, the Law of Education no.84/1995 only stipulates that “Lifelong learning (and CE too) may be organized by the Ministry of Education together with the Ministry of Culture” but it doesn’t say how. So, we still have no formal collaboration between these two ministries and, because of this, the AE made by the Ministry of Culture has no formal accreditation by the Ministry of Education and it can not use the networks of institutions and the tutors for adults from the Ministry of Education.

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The special governmental ordinance 36/1997 for modifying and updating the Educational Law stipulates the necessity to develop a new methodology for assessment, accreditation and finding resources for CE programs, the necessity to diversify the offer for CE in universities. The National Council for Training and Continuing Education was officially set up due to this act. There are lots of minister orders regarding mostly university continuing education, and for putting together distance education with CE.

There are a lot of specifications for social care and ways for social and professional reinsertion of the unemployed (Low 1/1991, 57/1994, for re-qualification for getting new skills, abilities for new jobs. The Law 57/1992 stipulates the socio-professional integration of disabled persons and social care for them.

Institutions

The institutional structure of AE varies, increasing in number and diversity. The number of institutions belonging to the Ministry of Culture has known a strong decreasing in the first years of the transition period 1989 – 2002 (from the almost 3000, to 200), because of the financial and legislative problems.

The AE activity developed by The Ministry of Culture and Cults belongs to the Center for Training, Continuing Education, and Cultural Management. The main institutions under this framework are:

Cultural homes (villages) Cultural houses (cities) People’s universities Art schools Cultural centers Regional centers for Adult Education

These institutions are subordinated to the local administration that funds partially the activities, besides the money earned through the specific economic actions and fees paid by the participants.

Cultural homes

Number

Location Number Central villages 2576Small villages (affiliated) 3601Total 6177

Special staff

Degree NumberUniversity degree 55High school degree 1588Gymnasium/vocational degree 51

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Total 1694Equipment

Quality Number Substandard 4996Accepted 920Good 261Total 6177

It is obvious that these homes are under equipped and have insufficient personnel. In fact the rural Cultural Homes organizing other activities than marriages and disco parties are only 4307 (70%).

Cultural houses

Number (total): 218

Staff: 595

Degree NumberUniversity degree 44High school degree 374Gymnasium/vocational degree 177Total 595

Equipment

Quality Number Substandard 55Accepted 116Good 47Total 218

People’s Universities

People’s universities are institutions methodologically supervised by The County Directorate for Culture, professionally belonging to The Ministry of Culture and Cults and funded by the local administration. In 2002 their situation was:

Number total: 162Number of courses: 2467Number of students: 42783

The Courses developed by the People’s Universities in 2002

Type of Courses Number of courses

Number of students

Technical and practice-oriented 909 14857Medicine-ecology 293 3086

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Literature and art 258 4432Foreign languages 249 4581Retraining for unemployed 214 4583Religion 149 4571History 118 1644Preparing for university admission 103 1835Economy 88 1536Agricultural sciences 47 923Philosophical sciences 39 735

In 1993 the National Association of People’s Universities (ANUP) was created with the help of German Association of People’s Universities. Its main directions are:

to form a professional network; to save the cultural patrimony and to support the cultural institutions; to train the professionals in culture domains; to promote literature; to enhance the exchange of expertise;

The distribution of ANUP members by counties.

Art schools

NumberTotal schools 39Total teachers 709Total groups of students 566Total students 13308Affiliated sections 30Part time employees 100

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Regional centers for adult education

They function near Cultural Houses and Homes and their number is 11. They have 22 employees with university and high school degree equally distributed. .

Cultural centers

Name Type of degree of employees

Number of employees

C.C. G. Apostu Bacău

University degree

5

High school degree

10

Gymnasium degree

11

C.C.Arcus Covasna

University degree

2

High school degree

4

Gymnasium degree

9

C.C. Brătianu Argeş

University degree

4

High school degree

11

Gymnasium degree

4

C.C. „Palatele Brâncoveneşti de la Porţile Bucureştiului”

University degree

5

High school degree

8

Gymnasium degree

25

C.C. „Rosetti – Tescanu – George Enescu”

University degree

2

High school degree

6

Gymnasium degree

7

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Employees in cultural centers by degree

If for continuing professional education there are a lot of governmental money, for general AE, provided mostly by the institutions belonging to the Ministry of Culture there are few money, that’s why the rapid decreasing of the number of such institutions.

On the other side, the institutions providing further education, as industrial and commercial companies, chambers of industry and commerce, and chambers of craft trades, numerous private and commercially run AE institutions have known an increase in number. This number is due to an increasing demand for continuing professional education (in all her aspects) and because of a lot of money coming from the government and European Union for retraining of the unemployed.

Beside this, there are a lot of nongovernmental institutions with social care purposes, focused on special services and educational activities for people with special needs, for aged people, for 33rganization groups (people with AIDS, drug addicts etc.), for minority groups etc.

The AE/CE institutions have a varied structure. They differ not only in size, but also according to whether:

they are exclusively responsible for CE or carry out other activities as well; their provision is open to all interested persons or is limited to a restricted

group; they are part of a major societal organization such as the churches, trade

unions and entrepreneurial associations, or are not bound in this way; they are governed by commercial interests (e.g., distance education

institutes), private social interests (e.g., church education services), public interests (e.g., community adult education centers) or other organizational interests (e.g., industrial and commercial companies);

they have a private, public or official legal status; and they offer provision in the whole field of AE or concentrate on areas of

provision with specific contents.

The most important AE institutions and groupings are:

33


Community adult education centers (people’s university or cultural houses). They develop both vocational and general education (for cultural, leisure purposes etc.). Mostly for the smaller ones it is very difficult to survive as far as the low for local community administration is only recently elaborated. In order to enrich their decreasing activity, they have created two years ago regional methodological centers to coordinate AE activities. There is also international logistic and scientific support for refreshing their activity since 1993, provided by the Institute for Adult Education from Bonn, which have a special bureau at Bucharest for this purpose. With their support, in 1994 the National Association of People’s Universities has been created, with the same purpose of reinforcing and supporting the activity in these institutions.

Commercial AE institutions, whose number and range of provision has grown considerably last years. Commercial institutions target those who can pay, particularly in the areas of foreign language teaching and data processing, management and accountability. The differences between them are regarding the certificate they deliver and the level of their curriculum.

Chambers of industry and commerce, and chambers of craft trades and agriculture, which offer a broad range of AE and contribute particularly to the professionalisation and qualification of the workforce by recognition of examinations.

Higher education institutions, which are the main providers for continuing professional education of the Ministry of Education. A lot of them have created departments of continuing education and distance education and offer CE both in traditional face to face courses and distance courses.

The foundations and other private associations for education, most of them are private universities that offer initial education, but they are for third age too. They have a more flexible offer than traditional universities, adapted to the market demand, developing distance education too, but usually they have a lower quality.

Educational organizations of the various sectors of the economy, which in many cases organize vocational and industrial continuing education, mostly at the demand of transnational companies or banks who pay for their employees. Even we don’t have a special law yet which stipulates the necessity for each company to train their employees, usually the big companies pay for the training of their employees.

A large number of voluntary initiatives and alternative groups, nongovernmental organizations are separate from the major societal organizations (e.g. the churches) and work with specific content or target groups. Their activity is mostly focused on general AE, intercultural, civic minority groups issues, working with people with special needs, problems of different 34rganization groups etc.

The media, too, plays a part in CE/AE, especially radio and television, which have an increasing educational role, together with theatres, cinemas, and mostly the Internet.

The state itself ensures that the CE organizations and establishments can continue to function effectively within appropriate structures („plurality“), and that where there are „deficits“ the state intervenes to offer support („subsidiary“). Even there are lots of providers for AE, sometimes they can’t develop attractive adapted offers to the needs of certain regions and target groups, even the state gives a lot of money to reinforce the activities and reduce the unemployment high rate in such regions.

34


Since the state accepts and encourages plurality, the whole structure of adult education has been allowed to develop freely, and has become widely differentiated. In many fields state regulations or subventions affect their activities only indirectly. Furthermore, there are still no national standards for evaluation and accreditation of such institutions.

The governmental funds for AE are used mostly for professional re-qualification and reconversion and are monitored by the Ministry of Work and Social Security and many public institutions or non-governmental organizations develop training for new jobs. The Ministry of Work and Social Security has 15 regional centers for the retraining of the unemployed, the principal aim of which is professional retraining The non-governmental organizations play a leading role in continuing professional training because they are more flexible providers, often with international support.

The services for retraining and professional conversion for adults in Romania are organized in two main streams:1. The National Agency for Employment;2. Private training providers.

The Structure of the National Agency for Employment contains:

Regional centers for professional training for adults (created by the help of the World Bank Project – Labor Force and Social Protection) in the cities: Călăraşi, Cluj – Napoca, Craiova, Râmnicu Vâlcea, Turnu Măgurele.

15 specialized centers in 14 counties: Bacău, Bistriţa-Năsăud, Botoşani, Braşov, Caraş-Severin, Dâmboviţa, Hunedoara (Deva, Petroşani), Iaşi, Olt, Neamţ, Prahova, Suceava, Timiş, Vâlcea.

Romanian – German joint Foundations: Arad, Sibiu, Timişoara. Zonal center for professional training for young unemployed Izvorul Mureşului. Professional training departments at the level of the Bucharest and County

Agencies for Employment.

The private providers of professional training are represented mostly by economic enterprises, NGO’s, Chambers of Trade and Industry, professional associations. The National Program for Professional Training for 2002 states the organization of 2830 training/conversion/updating courses for 225 professions. The most desired professions were in 2001:

Computer and computer network operator-maintainer: 254 courses Textile industry worker: 160 courses Waiter : 123 courses Masonry and brickwork: 111 courses computer assisted accountant: 109 courses

Between 1995 – 2001 a constant increase in the public interest for the conversion and training courses can be observed, so that in 2001 their number doubles. Although it has to be stated that the graduation rate of the courses organized by The National Agency for Employment varies between 71.3% in 1995 and 65.1% in 1998. Also, the percentage of those that find a job after graduating these courses is between 20.21% in 1996 and 12.35% in 1999.

35


Persons attending the training/conversion professional courses:

The interest for getting a new profession and for professional training and, subsequently, for getting a job, is reflected in the increase of the direct demands of individuals. A parallel trend is constituted by the demands of the economic agents.

Demands from the economic agents for training/conversion professional courses:

36


Between 1999 – 2002 there was a significant increase in the number of persons enlisted to the conversion/training professional courses even if the offer diminished from 23192 to 19357 courses. One may observe also an increase in the number of graduates and an increase in the number of those that abbandoned these courses. The offer for training courses and the dynamic of the persons enlisted for 1999 – 2002.

31.12.1999Courses were organized… Total of enlisted persons: 79.295

Have graduated Going on courses Have abandon

37


edTotal unemplo

yedHave been hired :

Total unemployed 0

56103 23909 6935 23192 6650At the demand of economic agents 14553 3491 2138

On the basis of research and prognosis of the perspectives of the labor market

11733 9758 2276

At the demand of interested individuals 29817 10660 2521

31.12.2000

Courses were organized…

Total of enlisted persons: 87.018

Have graduated Going on coursesHave abandoned

Total unemployed

Have been hired :

Total unemployed 4970



10296 8281 2465


31.12.2001

Courses were organized…

Total of enlisted persons: 93.786

Have graduated Going on coursesHave abandoned

Total unemployed

Have been hired :

Total unemployed 7784



5341 4645 1850


There are also a lot of money from the European Union, through their international programs Phare, Leonardo da Vinci, Tempus, Socrates etc, and World Bank has also

38


a special agreement with our government to give financial support for developing continuing education in universities.

Leonardo, Number of beneficiaries in Romania

Leonardo, Types of beneficiaries in Romania

There are also lots of international institutions that offer support in different fields. Funds for AE activities come also form sponsoring, from the (private) economy and private individuals.

Provisions

The provision of AE is based on several paradigms and the new realities and demands of the society: continuing professional education has known the most important development

because of new demands of the labor market, of new job profiles; the paradigm of the international dimension and the international partnership for

developing new ways of AE is a new and with an increasing importance one, in the context of the extended European Union;

39


the civic, intercultural, political AE have new connotations now, when we have to teach people the principle of a democratic society in which they have to take an active part;

education for unemployed, education for marginalized/excluded groups, AE as a support for change are new dimensions of AE in Romania, in the context of the increasing number of unemployed people, of illiterate people, of poor population or population at risk;

AE as a second chance for people who left the formal education too soon, for people who need to change the job and so on is a theoretical paradigm which knows a wide application. CE as a second chance aims also to enable people to overcome problems caused by the social change, to identify their own needs, goals and aims, to learn and be prepared for continuous self improvement. We also aim at supplying base education for an increasing population in a risk situation.

The provision of courses offered in the institutions for AE varies not only in content, duration, and form of organization, but also in the important question of whether it leads to a qualification (through an examination or various types of certificate).

Regarding the content, the biggest demands are for foreign languages, for computers, for different vocational courses and craft trades covering the jobs required on the labor market.

Regarding the types/duration of CE course, these vary widely. They range from long-term full-time courses (of up to two years), especially for retraining programs, to two-hour lectures. Vocational education tends to be longer, while political, general and cultural education is shorter. The most typical forms of CE provision are:

The course of one to two hours per week outside working hours, in the evening or, for those not working, in the daytime. This type of provision takes place mainly in the people’s universities and cultural houses.

Seminars of two or three days frequently arranged at weekend. Most providers offer this type of provision.

One – two week intensive courses of the „educational leave“ type. These are offered principally by community adult education centers or other private organizations.

A large part of short-term CE/AE provision is uncertificated, while longer-term activities usually lead to the award of a certificate. There are three usual types of award:

State certificates, which are mostly identical with those, awarded by other sectors of the education system (vocational education, general school education, and higher education).

Certificates particular to continuing education, which can be gained in specific fields. These are particularly subjects for vocational relevance (languages, information technology, etc.). It is mostly necessary that these certificates are recognized by the Ministry of Work and Social Security or Ministry of Education and Research, but unfortunately there is still a national procedure for validation and standards for evaluation of these offers in order for them to be recognized by state institutions even the providers belong to the Ministry of Culture network or to the private field.

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Certificates specific to organizations, which certify qualifications of relevance, and are mainly recognized within one organization, confirming specific vocational qualifications.

At the present time the types of provision are changing. Various forms are being used, often in combination, to meet the interests and needs of target groups. For instance, a lot of providers develop courses at the demand of a certain client, and they adapt the offer according with the client interests.

Research and higher education

Adult education problems have been the object of research and discussion both in conceptual and methodological terms. As in most countries, the share of this research is smaller, compared with that devoted to the education for children and youth.

Research on adult education issues has been carried out unsystematically so far, lacking a coherent perspective, as there was no specialized research center in the field. Universities tried to develop such researches but few of them have special departments. Starting with the year 2000, at the University of the West from Timisoara the Romanian Institute for Adult Education was set up, with the clear purpose of developing researches in this field, both at theoretical and practical level, and to coordinate the research for AE at national level, mostly those made by the specialists in AE form the universities. This institute is building up with the support of the German Institute for Adult Education from Bonn and it is the waited and necessary premise to reinforce the research and development on scientific basis of AE in Romania.It is only recent that we have been witnessing and extension of the theoretical and methodological concerns in the field of adult education at the university level.

In February 1998 at the Ministry of National Education and Research (MEC), the National Council for Continuing Education was created with special attributions for designing and coordinating the implementation of a national strategy for CE specially in universities.

In 1998 MEC carried out national research about the current state of CE in Romanian State universities. 50 state universities were involved and the conclusions of this research show that: CE has always been a dimension of university education because the continuing

staff development (for teachers and for doctors was compulsory by policy of MEC) and doctoral level.

After 1990 master’s degree has known the most important extension as form of post-graduate university specialization. There were a lot of post-graduate courses made in connection with the labor market, especially for technical, economic, law, medical and social field.

Due to the international programs SOCRATES, TEMPUS, LEONARDO DA VINCI, the international dimension of education has increased. Mostly the universities that have been involved in international partnerships have a rich offer for CE. Since 1997 but mostly since 1998, the universities have been developing

41


open and distance learning as a form of continuing education and a lot of post-graduate professional courses. Some of our universities have created departments of continuing education.

After 1989, a lot of private and state universities have been set up, but mostly for initial education. The activities for CE are focused mostly in traditional universities.

The users of university continuing education (UCE) are the clients from the world of business (mostly managers that want to know how to manage their own business, even though it is a small one), unemployed young scientists, mostly engineers. The demand for UCE has been increasing, especially due to new job profiles, the need for refreshing the competencies and knowledge. There are several cooperative forms of organization on both regional and upper-regional levels in which universities function as a partner, but efforts are needed towards a more systematic cooperation with professional associations for establishment of permanent joint-committees, common planning courses, common research activities, with a view to anticipate the market demand. Now there is little collaboration and agreement between the actors (those offering courses and those in need) as to what UCE should be.

CE financed projects, World Bank Funds (US $)

42


Number of CE projects/university, World Bank loan in Romania

Percent of funds/university from World Bank loan for Romania.

Since 1999 the Ministry of Education and Research has asked from coherent universities’ strategies in this field because of three main important characteristics of university as a provider of CE: high level of competence of academic staff; it can give

43


certificates of attendance recognized by all the society; and the newest trends offered in the fields of activity covered by the university are promoted because of the research activities.

UCE has not known the desired development because there is no form of certification governing training courses, because the lack of governmental funding for this kind of activity, because of lack of specialists, of low developed structures and offers, because of poor links between different partners in community. Even the courses for CE are made at university level, CE is still considered as an inferior form of studies. There is also no institutional support for CE, there is no legal framework creating incentives for the institutions to finance CE. The capacity of teaching is not big enough to cover courses by the regular teaching load. Pre-career studies enjoy priorities. Consequently, there have to be provided special incentives in order to reach broad basis participation from the teaching staff.

However, CE is seen as a resource of funding for universities. The Law 88/1993 concerning university recognition, autonomy, decentralizing of responsibilities allowed to universities to develop their own programs and courses for funding out of one’s own resources. For this there is necessary to create stronger links with the economy, to develop programs for accreditation and recognition of diplomas, there is also an important need of investigation and evaluation. The CE reflection should be global, including the whole teaching and learning process. Trends and perspectives

The new socio-economic realities have produced and will produce changes both in terms of legislation and institutions, and of attitudes and mentalities. In the foreseeable future the tendencies in this sector of adult education (professional training) are characterized by a marked decentralization, by integrating it into the development plans of various enterprises, etc. Decentralization, in its turn, poses a number of problems such as those regarding the state’s role in adult education, forms of professional associations, etc.

The objectives, the contents, and modalities to reach this aim will be redefined. As far as the objectives are concerned, these include such aspects as consideration and receptiveness to change, development of understanding abilities, critical acceptance and adjustment to change, development of ability to evaluate changes and to encourage individual and original behavior patterns, development of motivation and will to overcome difficulties.

Two levels will be considered in the definition of the educational objectives, contents, and modalities: the first is a general level which is intended for adults with different educational

qualifications and socio-professional occupations, age, interests, and which responds adequately to the need for professional further training.

the second is a special level, intended for certain disadvantaged socio-professional categories (i.e. real and potential unemployment). This type of education will be strongly contextualised and marked by the particular and specific aspects of professional reconversion. Its content must also include

44


activities directed at changing attitudes and behavior patterns, which should eliminate such phenomena as stress, fear, psycho-affective insecurity, etc.

Some of the institutions specific to the new system, which will be regulated by means of the new legislative stipulations, which have already been set up, will be evaluated and accredited according with national standards for quality in AE. There already are institutions for evaluation that are working at these standards and items for evaluating the quality in AE: National Agency for Evaluation and Occupational Standards, National Council for Evaluation and Academic Accreditation (mostly for university continuing education).

In the framework of the latter one, an important role is played by post-qualification education, achieved particularly with the support of higher education institutions, which are more and more concerned with professional training and further training.

In the discussion on life-long learning, political and academic discussion on CE focuses more and more on learners and learning. Learning at the workplace, in the social environment, in and with the media, self-organized and self-directed learning are the essential key words of this development. In connection with this, one of the strongest preoccupations is 45rganiz on training the adult trainer in order to enable him to grasp and apply the new theories, paradigms, and practices, with the support of new educational technologies. We couldn’t develop anything in a proper way in this field, even if we do a lot of researches, if we don’t develop first this dimension of training trainers and managers from AE institutions. There already are good models of teacher training for AE, developed with German and Danish support.

A strong tendency is developed towards internationalization of AE. Due to European Union programs in which Romania is partner or coordinator, and because of Romanian preoccupations for openness and developing of AE according with international tendencies in this field, in the last years Romania has become more and more known at European and global level, and an increasing number of specialists and institutions have become members of international bodies and organizations.

In the last years there is a strong tendency to openness and flexible offers of programs, as well as an increasing demand for AE. This is the situation of evolution of whole AE at national level. In the field of vocational training and retraining as well as in the field of offers for social problems, democracy, liberal policy there are a lot of providers, with a great potential, but they need a professional support, mostly an international one, in order to develop them in a proper way. There is also need for a degree in AE/CE, for better-qualified specialists in AE, and in this respect universities are asked to develop master’s programs, or post-university courses.

It is also necessary to develop a more flexible and accessible offer for those in an increasing number, which aren’t able to pay AE. A dangerous development is going on towards a more and more large gap in the possibilities of funding participants. The number of those who are unable to pay even modest fees is increasing, and the number of those who are willing to pay substantially higher fees is also rising – so that the social gap between rich and poor becomes even more evident. Efforts in order to take steps against this trend have to become more and more evident, this tendency being in the context of a European policy here as well. It is necessary to

45


attend and to adapt all our efforts and approaches in AE to the European policy, for all dimensions of AE.

References:

Huberman, M. (1973) Education permanente: Comme les adultes apprennent et evoluent. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.

Lengrand, P. (1973) Introduction a l’education permanente. Bucharest: Editura Didactica si Pedagogica (in Romanian).

Nuissl, E. / Pehl, K., Adult Education in Germany, Frankfurt/Main 1999. Paun, E. and Neacsu, I. (1985) Universities and Adult Education in Romania, in

International Journal of University Adult Education, Vol. XXIX, No. 1-3, pp. 192-208.

Popescu, T. (1974) Adult Education. Local Microsystems. Bucharest: Editura Didactica si Pedagogica (in Romanian).

Sava, S. (1999) “Continuing education in Romania”, in Julian Auleytner (eds.) Lifelong learning – Links between West and Central Europe. Warsaw; Elipsa

Sava, S. (1999) Issues for International Cooperation in Adult Education in Romania at University Level. DIE, IV/99.

Serbescu, F. (1984) “Adult Education System in Romania: the Framework for Shaping the Scientific Conscience and Aesthetic Value”. Information Bulletin on Adult Education.

xxx (1998) Developing of Lifelong Education in Romania. Ministry of National Education, Bucharest: Editura Alternative (in Romanian).

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ANNEX

Providers of general CE 1997-1999*

Providers Total (%) Universities 53,0

Non governmental organizations 27,0

Associations and professional

organizations 15,3

Sector organizations 4,7

*Data from the Ministry of Education and Research

Providers of vocational CE 1997-1999*

Providers Total %

Vocational training institutions 47,7

Public institutions 15,0

Small and middle enterprises 13,0

Institutes and research centers 12,1

Trade-unions 4,6

Big enterprises 3,8

Chambers of commerce, industry and

agriculture 3,8

*Data from the Ministry of Education and Research

Funds for AE ($)

Funds 2000 2001 2002

Leonardo da Vinci program 3609412 3731565191780

0

World Bank loans for university

education6353613 - -

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Involvement in general CE*

Year Number of participants 1997 1540

1998 1250

1999 2421

2000 4251

2001 328

2002 387

I. Data from Ministry of Health and Family, Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity, Ministry of Education and Research

Involvement in vocational CE*

Year Number of participants

1989 3301

1994 543

1995 46628

1996 49074

1997 61612

1998 71176

1999 79662

2000 131634

2001 102446

2002 470

II. Data from Ministry of Health and Family, Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity, Ministry of Education and Research

48


HUNGARY

The socio-economic changes of the last decade have brought significant changes in the structure of the settlement system, in the regional distribution of population and concentration within a settlement. The main feature of this change was an accelerating urbanization process, which manifested itself in the growth of the number of towns and population and in the sophistication of institutions and infrastructure in a settlement and in the morphologic appearance.

This process relied on the outflow of population from villages in demographic approach, migration gain can be found only at towns and large villages with high population, going through urbanization. As for small villages, migration loss has increased and stabilized at a permanently high level. Parallel with the urbanization process the network of villages significantly developed, living conditions and infrastructure improved but the growth of disparities was still considerable, polarization strengthened. It is a specific feature that dynamic development of the capital is accompanied by considerable depopulation, with increasing number of out migrants to the agglomeration.

Changes in the decade of the change of regime are the most distinct in the situation and development of settlements. Settlements in underdeveloped areas or peripheries are unable to change their situation on their own. Employment opportunities for local population are unfavorable; a high and long-term unemployment prevails, so income disparities increase too. A system of normative aids helps backward settlements function, which, if having the adequate funds, enjoy benefits when making regional applications. However, to moderate their lag is a very hard task for them even thus.

Number of villages

The legal basis for regional and settlement-level division of Hungary – as in case of other countries – is the Constitution. Accordingly, the national territory is divided into the capital, counties, towns and villages. The capital is subdivided into districts, while towns can be split into districts too. Villages, towns and the capital are settlement-level units, which necessarily cover the whole national area. Counties are regional units that consist of settlement level units.

Administrative division of Hungary on 1 July 2001:

Capital (districts) 1 (23)County 19Towns of county rank 22Other towns 229Villages 2883

County, capital, total 20Settlements (including Budapest) 3135

Population

Number of population (thousands) 10 198

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Population density person/km2 109.6 Proportion of males, % 47.6 Proportion of females, % 52.4Females per thousand males 1 102

From the population rate of persons living (%) in settlements with less than 1 thousand inhabitants: 7.6 In small settlements with 1 to 10 thousand inhabitants: 33.1 In medium size settlements with 10-100 thousand inhabitants: 30.2 In large settlements with more than 100 thousand inhabitants: 29.1

Economic situation

Gross domestic product (GDP), 2001 GDP, (previous year = 100) 103.8+ Per capita GDP, thousand HUF 1461.0+ Contribution to the GDP, %; 2000

Agriculture 4.2Industry and construction 33.4 Trade, tourism, transport, post and telecommunication 22.3 Other services 40.1 Domestic use of GDP, %; 2000 Household consumption 60.6 Collective consumption 9.5 Gross capital formation 29.9

Incomes, earnings

Total household income, billion HUF/ year, 2000 9 282 Of which: rate of earnings, % 48.4 Rate of pensions, % 12.1 Rate of other social transfers in cash, % 6.7 Rate of social transfers in kind (public health, education etc.), % 17.3 Rate of other incomes, % 15.4

Employment, 2001 (Labor Force Survey data relating to 15-74 year-old-population)

Economically active population(Thousands)

Denomination 1999 2000 2001

Employed persons25 3 8123 8493 860

Of which: employees 3 2013 2563 296

Unemployed persons 285 263 233

Economically active population aged 15-74 years 4096 4 112 4 093

25 *Excluding persons being on child care leave and including conscripts.

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Education, 2001

Children at kindergarten 342.3 Pupils at primary schools 944.2 Apprentices 130.5 Secondary school students 420.9 Students at universities and colleges 184.1

Social assistance

Child-care allowance, support for training of children, regular child-care support, 2000

Regions Monthly average number ofrecipients of

Average annual

Average monthly

Child-care Support for Number of regular child

Amount ofregular child

Allowance Training of Care supportCare support,Children HUF

Total 191 22769 674786 3473 436

Categories/definitions of social benefits:

Recipients of pension, retirement allowance: insured persons provided with pension, annuity or other provision by the National Pension Insurance Fund or the Hungarian State Railways.

Pension by own right: the old age, disability, and accident disability pension. Old-age pension: pension provided on the criteria of having passed the specified retirement age, having worked the specified years of service, and having been granted a ruling in approval of a pension claim.

Disability pension, accident disability pension: pension awarded prior to passing retirement age on criteria of deterioration of working ability and set on the basis of extent of disability.

Dependents’ pension: Widowhood pension: widow’s or accident pension received by right of relation. Orphan’s allowance: provision received by right of relation or accident to relative. Parents pension: provision due to the parents or grandparents of a deceased person.

Main provision: if there is only one form of benefit, the benefit received, whatever heading it is awarded under, if more than one benefit is received concurrently, the benefit of top priority. (Usually the benefits received in the insured person’s own right have top priority.)

Supplementary provision: if there is more than one form of benefit, those benefit other than the main provision.

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Full benefit: main and supplementary provisions taken together.

Minimum pension: the smallest nominal statutory amount of pension for the period in question.

New retirement resolutions: resolutions ordering the transfer of pension or retirement provision to the claimant after positive evaluation based on administrative regulations.

Sick pay: income substitute benefit due to those in occupational categories defined by statute. It is provided for the calendar days of the period of inability to work after the expiry of sick leave, except for child-care sick pay, labor accident and occupational disease in which cases sick pay may be claimed from the first day. Since 1 January 1996 the employer has to bear one third of the expenses of sick leave.

Sick pay days: those of the days of unfitness to work for which the insured person received sick pay (in calendar days).

Average daily number of persons on sick pay: a quotient of the sick pay days of insured persons and of calendar days.

Sick leave: an employee is entitled to 15 days’ sick leave per calendar year to cover periods of unfitness for work occurring by reason of sickness – between 1 January 1992 and 31 December 1995, sick leave was set as 10 working days – out of which the employee is entitled to 3 days’ sick leave without any justification, whose expenses are borne by the employer. Till July 1997 the amount of sick leave was minimum 75 per cent of the average earnings in the reference month, from 1 July 1997 it is 80 per cent of absence fee.

Child-care assistance benefits: provisions relate to family allowance and schooling support, introduced in October 1999, granted by the state monthly to families with children.

Family allowance: socio-political cash benefit granted by individual title between 1 April 1990 and 31 March 1996 for child keep. Between 1 April and 31 December 1998 it was due to families with 1or 2 children only in case the per capita monthly income of the family (calculated on the basis of the previous year) did not surpass the level stipulated by law. In case of families with 3 or more children or with chronic illness the provision was still due by individual title. Since 1 January 1999 family allowance is again provided by individual title for children up to the school age and for chronically ill or handicapped children. The parents are granted schooling support for children in the compulsory schooling age (6 to 16 years) and for children still studying in public institution but not surpassing 20 years of age.

Child-care allowance: due to a parent applying for unpaid leave after maternity leave has expired up to the child’s third birthday or up to the tenth birthday of a child who is chronically ill or physically or mentally handicapped.

52


Child-care fee: due to a parent applying for unpaid leave after maternity leave has expired up to the child’s second birthday. Childcare fee has the same form as sick pay and is related to the individual’s earnings. Between 15 April 1998 and 1 January 2000 this type of benefit was suspended.

Public health

Inhabitants per physician in active service, 1999 276.0 IInhabitants per one operating hospital bed, 2001 127.0+

Number of physiciansin active service

Number of generalpractitioners

Number of inhabitantsper

Operating hospital beds

Regions PersonsPer ten thousandinhabitants

Andfamilypediatricians

Generalpractitionerand familypediatrician

NumberPer tenthousandinhabitants

TOTAL .. .. 6 7291 49083 43083,2

Communication infrastructure

Denomination 1999 2000 2001

Post 3 2473 2573 265

Telephone 3 6053 4793 260

Number of radio broadcasters183 179

Number of television main transmitters66 65

Cultural institutions

Number of Number of lent library

Number of attendances to, thousands

TOTAL 3 585 46 475 36 129 3 938 9 895 14 294

Educational system

The Hungarian educational system includes all educational levels from the kindergarten till adult education, and is about integrated education. The Hungarian law has different sections for all these educational levels. The laws concerning the adult education were made to assure for everybody the right to learn, to serve the

53


interest of each citizen and to suit to the expectations of the European Union. Each citizen has the right to learn in order to suit the requirements concerning the development on economical, cultural and technological level and every citizen has to be able to join the world of work successfully and to be prosperous in his live. In order to achieve this the Hungarian Parliament created specific laws: Act CI of 2001 of Adult Education.

To the educational system belong the following:- Public education- Vocational training- Institutions of higher education- Institutions for public use, societies, corporations, NGO-s, public

foundations- Legal representatives, economic institutions without legal

representative, enterprises.

The Hungarian legislation for adult education is divided in two parts: the adult education inside the scholar system and the adult education outside of this. The laws and executive orders for adult education within the school system are the same as the, for the students studying in regular education and they contain also the special rules concerning the adult education. The same certificates obtained in regular training can be obtained also through training for adults.

III. The Hungarian Educational System

The public education belongs to the Ministry of Education; the orders belonging here are about the work schedules of all students of school-age (till age 16). The institutes for public education are the following:

- kindergarten (age: 4-6):1. normal2. special

- primary school (age: 7-10):1. normal2. special

- elementary school (age: 11-14)1. normal2. special

- secondary education (age: 15-18): 1. secondary school (establishes general culture):

secondary general school (it ends only with school leaving examination)

secondary vocational school (it ends with professional and school leaving examination)

2. vocational school (it ends only with professional examination)

The Hungarian legislation calls the above mentioned part of the educational system: public education.

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- higher education:1. accredited school type vocational training on higher

level2. education on level of the colleges (basic training

and vocational training)3. basic training in the universities4. postgraduate studies (specialized further education:

PhD, DLA)

The higher education system is organized in the following form:- regular- distance learning- correspondence courses- evening school

The public and the higher education is the part of the educational policy, and belong to the Ministry of Education. The adult education – institutions for people with special needs – belongs to the Ministry of Employment and Labour.

IV. The System of the Adult Education

The adult education outside the scholar system (public education and higher education) is regulated by the Act CI of 2001, this domain belongs to the Ministry of Employment and Labour. This belongs to the Department for Part-time Education inside to the Ministry

It concerns three main domains: foreign languages – mother-tongue qualification general culture

The adult education is influenced by the fast changing educational requires, by the labour market and makes the frequent change of occupation possible. There are more types of education:

- elementary adult education: less then 3 000 persons/year. It is less every year.

- adult education in secondary school: 95 000 persons/year. It wasn’t growing in the last two years.

- adult education on higher educational level: these are the most popular in Hungary

evening school courses by correspondence distance learning

To this Ministry belongs the Council for Adult Educational Institutes, which is ruled by the National Institute for Adult Education.

In Hungary the adult education is based on two fields: one ruled by the state, belonging to the Ministry of Employment and Labour, and the other is the civil society (NGO’s) and economical organizations.

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Adult training within the school system

In Hungary with a population of ten million today there are almost four thousand primary schools for pupils of normal school-age, the number of pupils is approximately one million while the number of teachers is 83.000. (1996) When we look at the educational data of the population over the age of seven (1993), it can be seen that more than 23% per cent did not complete all the eight grades of primary school. (2% attended no school at all, 4,7% completed 1-3 grades, 16,8% completed 4-7 grades.) More than 30% of the population over the age of seven completed all the eight grades of primary school. While ten years ago, in 1988 more than fifteen thousand people attended this form of adult education, by today this number has dropped to just over five thousand (1996).

Adult education in secondary schools and posterior adult educationWhen we look at the highest educational level of the population over the age of fifteen (1996), it can be seen that 18,9% completed vocational training schools and 22,7% completed secondary schools. Despite the expansion of secondary school level education, Hungarian figures are still significantly lagging behind the average of OECD countries. In Hungary 45,6% (compared to the OECD average of 69,0%) of the 25-34 age-group obtained at least secondary qualifications while this figure is 40,1% (compared to the OECD average of 63,0%) for the 35-44 age-group. (1996)

There are approximately 1000 grammar and specialized secondary schools, and 600 vocational training schools in operation in Hungary today. Opposed to the declining tendency seen at primary school level adult education, this type of adult training is slowly increasing and almost reaches 15% of the number of students that attend regular secondary schools.

Higher level adult education within the school systemThe percentage of the population receiving higher education according to age groups is as follows: 11% for the 18-21 age-group (OECD 21,5%), 6,9% for the 22-25 age-group (OECD 15,3%), 2,9% for the 26-29 age-group (OECD 6,6%). The number of people continuing their university or college studies at adult age reached 50.000 in 1996, which implies that participants in higher level adult education constituted 35% of the normal attendance.

Labour market training

As a consequence of the high rate of unemployment brought about by the economic changes, new forms of adult training had to be developed. In 1994 approximately one hundred thousand while in 1996 seventy thousand people attended this type of training. 80% of the trainings were aimed at obtaining vocational qualifications; the average period of these trainings was between 4-6 months. 20% of all the trainees completed primary school; this ratio is 40-44% among the unemployed. While in 1994 67% of the participants were unemployed, this figure was only 30% in 1996.

Training market

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According to estimates, nearly two thousand institutions, on a more or less regular basis, are involved in training as their main or subsidiary profile. Experts say that there are approximately 500-600 training enterprises whose main profile is training, and the variety of trainings offered by them determines the operation of the market.

On the basis of obligatory data provision stipulated for by legal rules, it can be stated that 4200 training courses for the unemployed were registered in 1996, which were attended by over 100.000 trainees, however, these training courses significantly overlap the system of training for the unemployed.

On-the-job training

On-the-job training is one of the most significant fields of human resources investment and training. More than 50% of the economic organisations provide on-the-job training in addition to training trainees. Companies with a majority of foreign ownership conduct on-the-job training more actively. In addition to training trainees they concentrate on trainings in the field of economics the most. (According to surveys conducted concerning the breakdown of trainings, 25% of the trainings focus on economics. The second leading direction (20%) is taken by technical training, and there is a significant rise in trainings in the field of information technology (15%) and in foreign language teaching (13%).

Distant teaching

The first steps to establish a distant learning network were taken almost ten years ago, mainly within the framework of universities. According to estimates, approximately 7-10.000 people continue their studies in the form of distant learning today.

Non-profit organisations involved in adult education activitiesOnly 4,5% of all the education institutions belong to the churches or are in private ownership. The number of students who attend non-state-owned institutions is even fewer, they constitute only 3,7% of all the students. Concerning school-types, the ratio of these institutions varies: they come to 4-5% in the field of primary education, and to about 8-14% in secondary education and at other levels. Nearly fifty thousand civil organizations, acting for 18-20% of the adult population, have also appeared among the service providers. Civil organizations themselves are “learning Organizations” promoting co-operation, information communication and civil development in society. According to surveys conducted about the directions taken in activities carried out by associations and foundations, approximately 13% of these Organizations are involved in education or training, cultural or religious activities. It should be noted that the function of training or information provision is undertaken by various other organizations that are involved in the field of environment protection, safeguard of rights, charity, social, health care, mental hygienic or other professional activities. According to estimates, several hundreds of local or nation-wide non-profit associations and foundations are partly or fully engaged in public and adult education.

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V. The Adult Education Policy and Legislation

In addition to the governmental preparations for the UNESCO adult education conference held in Hamburg in 1997, the network of professional organisations also worked actively on articulating their expectations of the conference, and after CONFINTEA 5 they organised a number of public events in order to draw the attention to the significance and recommendations of the Hamburg conference. Hungary was among the first countries to have the documents of the conference translated. The Hungarian government, as the first one among Central European countries, initiated the preparation of a country report on adult training for OECD with the involvement of OECD experts. As a result of the activities started by the government in office between 1994-1998 a comprehensive report was produced, however, it was only debated after the new parliamentary elections. Professional organisations establishing contacts with OECD experts were able to articulate their opinion about the one-sidedness of the report and OECD recommendations at the international conference held et the end of 1998. After the first free elections held in 1990, the government started the preparatory work for a new act on adult education at the ministerial level, however, the draft was not submitted during their term of office. The initiative that was aimed at the reformation of the 1976 adult education act had a lot of professional benefits. The ministry prepared a documentation while professional organisations overviewed the European adult education legislation in a study based on a diversity of sources, and organised discussions with the collaboration of the NGO’s. The Hungarian Folk High School Society has been co-operating with UNESCO, or more precisely with its Institute for Education in Hamburg since 1993.

In addition to the 1989 act on associations, the 1997 non-profit act and the 1997 act that regulates the ownership of real property used by civil organisations are of equal importance. The further development of adult education and the enactment of a new law based on the concept of lifelong learning were also included in the programme of the new government set up in 1998. Having learnt the lessons from the work with the former government, civil organisations in adult education formed a platform, relying on more methodical international counselling assistance this time, in order to organise a publicly conducted dialogue with legislators. In addition to studies on a number of new laws (the laws of Sweden, Finland and the German provinces), the Slovenian and Estonian laws were also handed over to legislators for analysis. The new concept, which was submitted to Parliament in 2000, contains more opportunities to assert the aspects of and the demand for support for not only labour market oriented and vocational dominated adult learning but also for non-formal adult learning. At the same time the establishment of a general and complex system of requirements, which was the precondition of the changes in adult education, a sub-system of education of culture, could not have been achieved without the fundamental transformation of the macro-economic, political and legal frameworks. It is only when changes expanding and altering the scope of the sub-systems of society and that of civil society come from top to bottom in the vertical structure of society that our own resources can be exploited in a more efficient way, and a new and dynamic balance between local, national and European dimensions can be steadily established. Hungarian adult education has overcome this critical point. The fashionable slogan of Europeanness and its external influence were initially taken with submissive acceptance, which later changed into condemnation and intellectual

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resistance as a form of counter-reaction. However, co-operation pointing in the direction of real partnership and equality, the placement of national values in the foreground and their recognition as international values strengthened the partnership quality and professional feature of co-operation. The critical point of changes is where small communities and direct professional relations have the opportunity to expand their common scope. A new era is about to commence in the identity of national societies through the daily experience millions of people encounter as European and international dimensions imbue the everyday life of local and national communities. It is an opportunity to intensify local and national features by enriching them with the European dimension directly. Hungarian adult education not only followed and suffered from these changes, but was also able to act as a partner able to learn and make initiations. Nevertheless, there is a lot to be done in Hungarian adult education in this new situation:

the development and improvement of the knowledge of foreign languages

the more profound knowledge, preservation and representation of local and

national values

the development of the capacities and techniques of international and European

co-operation, the training and further training of adult education experts capable of

international co-operation

the development of co-ordinative structures of multi-sectorial adult education and

the development of data collection and comparative research complying with

international requirements in the field of adult education.

The Acts came into force last year in order to resolve the needs of the lifelong learning in Hungary. Hungary waited 15 years for lows concerning adult education.

The functioning of the adult education is described in the legal system. In Hungary the adult education has to reach the European level. The law takes into account the needs of the adults in difficult situations like unemployment, illness and discrimination, by solving the problems they take in consideration the requirements of the European Union. Concerning the local partnership, there are specialists in the field working on the programs and in each group is made a needs assessment, they have to elaborate a strategy, focusing on national needs and respecting the national diversity.

The law also requires the cooperation on international level. In order to reach the European level the Parliament prescribes the work with institutions or meetings with specialists on the field from other countries. The institutions have to take in consideration not only the national needs and requires, but also to instruct the adults for international relations.

The lifelong learning is also supported by the state. The preparing for this begins already in the schools. In the institutes of higher education it is an actual theme. Qualified teachers and trainers are preparing the students for the learning and for the submitting the ideas of the lifelong learning.

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The law includes also the participation of institutions. All the institutions have to be accredited and the degrees have to be equal with all the degrees given by the regular schools. The information has to get also in regions; the methods of communication have to be improved.

In Hungary there are law suggestions also for the following years. Since 1 st July 2002 the institutions working in the field can ask for their accreditation. Some of the proposals will be adopted from 1st January 2003 others from 1st January 2004. The prepared Act for 2003 prescribes how and for what the normative aids can be used, from this aid only accredited institutions can have part. The number of the people who will get part of this aid will be specified by the state.

The law which will be operative on 1st January 2004 prescribes that adults who will be prepared for work in the community at higher level in order to serve this should be financed by the state. The aim is only for those who take part at an accredited training at an accredited institution.

The new laws and which is already operative show, that Hungary is prepared to achieve improvements on the field of educational learning and the practice shows the same. In Hungary there are many NGO functioning on the field of adult education. They organize trainings for adults in order to make them known with new technologies, with languages, which could be used in their lives. They present an opportunity for people living in the rural area, in the furthest points of the country to be well informed.

The Institutions of the Adult Education Policy and Legislation

The matters concerning adult education in Hungary belong to the Ministry of Finances and Labour. Inside of this works the National Institute for Adult Education. The decree 91/2001 (26. April) contains the detailed regulation of the accreditation of the programs concerning adult education. The registration of adult education is made by the National Center for Public Education Valuation and Examination. This has 7 directories in the regions of the country: Central-Hungary, Central Trans-danubia, West Trans-danubia, South Trans-danubia, North-Hungary, South Great Plain, North Great Plain There are some other decrees belonging to the Ministry of Education such as the decree 48/2001 (29 December) about the adult educational date base, and the decree 27/2001 (27 July) concerning the National Educational List.

There are also Regional Centers for Manpower Improvement. There are also 7 directories and there is also the National Council for Adult Education.

The National Council for Adult Education (NCAE) – Országos Felnőttképzési Tanács (OFKT)

The NCAE is defined by the Act 2001./CI. 5§ of Adult Education. The Ministry of Education is responsible for the guidance of the instructions in school systems, and the Ministry of Employment and Labour is responsible of the education of adults, unemployed people and for the instruction of handicapped people. Two other

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ministries are also part of the council: The Ministry of Finances and the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage. The Ministry of Finances is responsible for the laws concerning the financing of adult education, while the Ministry of National and Cultural Heritage determines the functioning of the institutes according to the act, which describes the cultural education.

The NCAE helps the Ministry of Employment and Labour in the problems concerning adult education. They prepare the vocational decisions, purpose motions, and express opinion. They express their opinion concerning:

Strategies of the adult education Principles of the financial aid Purposes for law concerning adult education Rules for the accreditation of the institutions taking part in adult

education

They assess how adults can take part in the work of the society after taking part in adult education and they make suggestions in order to improve the adult education in Hungary.

The Council makes suggestions for: The changes needed in adult education after the analyzing the

experiences of the instructed adults The development of methodology in adult education, summarizing the

national and international methods, helping the publication about the methodology of educating adults

The financing the researches in adult education Further vocational trainings for professionals on the field The improvement of a national and regional institutional system for

adult education

The National Institute for Adult Education (NIAE) – Nemzeti Felnőttoktatási Intézmény (NFI)

The NIAE is also an institution working for the Ministry of Employment and Labour. This Ministry works together with the Ministry of Finances also in this field. Their work concerns the following matters:

Improvement of the professional work and methodology in adult education

Improvement of the educational training Creation of the professional documentation concerning adult education

and the continuous improvement of the documentation Coordination of educational systems, researches on national level Establishment of relations between adult education, public education

and higher education Improvement of the relations between the institutes for adult education

making part of the EU and the institutions in Hungary

The Corporation for Accreditation of Adult Educational Institutes – Felnőttoktatási Akkreditációs Tanács (FAT)

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This Corporation has been established according to Act 2001./CI. 13§ of Adult Education. They control the work of the institutions in adult education and they decide which institution can be accredited. It is an independent corporation, in which the Minister of Education chooses the participants from professionals on the field of adult education. The Corporation can have maximum 20 members, they are experts in educational law, employment policy, members of the church, economical institutions, employers, workers, local institutions and members of institutions of adult education. The Corporation is financed by the state in order to improve the development of adult education.

The aim of the accreditation is double: They show that adult education is according to the laws, and they show what

qualitative standards the institutions are using, they guarantee for the participants, that they are studying in qualified institutions and taking part on qualified programs

They show how the institutions are using the aids and the efficiency of this

The accreditation is a method based on self-control; it is a single Act, which is supervised also after the accreditation. The advantage of this method is that it is flexible and it makes a rapid procedure possible.

In the Corporation there are professional committees:1. General instructing branch of studies2. Ecclesiastical committee3. Committee for handicapped people4. Committee for languages5. Committee for professions

The National Vocational Qualification List

The List concerns the higher education, the education in universities (49%) and colleges (46%). It is also about the further vocational training (e.g.: PhD) and the accredited school type higher vocational training.

The work schedule of the students, which are not anymore of school age, is the part-time education. The basic education is about the obtaining of university or college graduation and qualification.

The National Center for Public Education Valuation and Examination – Országos Értékelési és Vizsgaközpont (OKÉV)

The National Center for Public Education Valuation and Examination makes the supervision of the institutions on the field of adult education. They have the right to examine if the institution taking part in the adult education is registered, if their work is made according to the law. For this they use professionals on this field, which are named by the Minister of Education. They make part of a corporation: The corporation for accreditation of adult educational institutes. About their decisions the Minister of Education releases a ministerial decree.

The Regional Centers for Improvement of Work-Capacity and Formation

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This is also functioning as a sub-institution of the Ministry of Employment and Labour in the seven regions: Central-Hungary, Central Trans-danubia, West Trans-danubia, South Trans-danubia, North-Hungary, South Great Plain, North Great Plain. Their object is to improve the education also in the farther regions of the country, they help in the preparing of the unemployed people for employment and they take part in international projects concerning adult education as well.

There is a program for the instruction of adults, which has to be respected. It prescribes the level of competency, the issues concerning the participating, the time for the instruction, the methods of the instructions, the modules of the material (aim, contest, extent), the number of the participants, the describing of the system of valuation at the end of the instruction.

The instructional program has to take in account the different needs of the participants, it has to check the knowledge of the participants at the beginning of the instruction. The adult instruction can also be organized as an Open University.

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POLAND

Criteria used to define rural

The OECD defines rural areas in Poland as territory situated outside town administrative boundaries, unlike in the European Union and where the distinction between urban and rural is based on population density.

Rural areas in Poland defined according to different criteria

Definition criteria Rural population as percentage of total population

Rural areas as percentage of total

area

Average population density(people/ km2)

Administrative division intorural and urban areas(according to GUS)

38,1 93,4 50,4

Population density below150 people/ km2

(OECD criterion)35,0 91,7 47,1

Population density up to100 people/ km2

(EU criterion)32,8 83,0 48,9

Data collected at commune level. The total area of Poland is 312,700 km 2, the population (end 1998) was 38.6 million of which 14.7 million were rural dwellers.Source: GUS (Central Statistical Office)

The above Table shows that the differences in defining rural as oppose to urban under the above definition criteria are rather insignificant, especially for GUS and OECD criteria.

In Poland there are:

a) 870 towns of which 564 are seats of urban-rural communities (gminas);b) 56,803 rural localities consisting of: 42,782 villages and 14,021 colonies, hamlets or settlements.

The settlement pattern varies widely: Nearly 15% of villages have less than 100 inhabitants, Close to 66% of villages have 100 to 500 dwellers, Nearly 13% of villages have 500 to 1000 dwellers, Only 6% of villages have at least 1000 inhabitants.

Out of a total of 2,486 gminas, 1,606 are rural and 564 urban-rural.

Poland has a relatively low average population density of 124-people/ km2.

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Population in rural areas

The rural population according to the Polish definition accounts for 38.1% of the total population (14.737 million people) with 7.191 million men and 7.202 million women. The agricultural census showed that in 1996, 50.9% of the rural population was involved in farming. The share of the rural population varies between voivodships from 20.2% in the Silesian voivodship to 59.0% in the Podkarpacie voivodship.

The share of people below 14 years of age and above 70 years old is much higher than in towns. The percentage of multi-generation families is also much higher than in towns. Households with 5 people and more account for 12.2% of the total number of households in towns whereas in rural areas they constitute 29.7% of families.

Educational levels of the rural population are lower than those of urban dwellers.

Comparison of the educational achievement of the rural and urban populations(15-years old and more):

Category (people above 15) Urban areas

Rural areas

Total 100 100Educational achievement:

Higher level Secondary school and college Vocational Primary school Unfinished primary school or no

education

9,834.124.727.63.8

1,915.428,143.810.8

Source: GUS according to population and representative household census carried out in 1995

The poor education of rural dwellers inhibits farm modernisation and reduces the scope for developing off-farm employment opportunities.

Therefore improving the educational standards and qualifications of the rural population continues to be a priority for the Government.

Rural population by education level and by group age

Age groups Total Higher academic

Secondary or college

Basic vocational

Completed primary

education

Uncompleted primary

education or without

education15 - 24 years 100 0,3 17,7 33,7 42,1 6,2

25 - 39 100 3,3 26,6 48,5 20,6 1,040 - 49 100 3,1 17,1 33,0 44,9 1,9

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50 - 59 100 2,4 8,8 14,5 67,7 6,660 and more 100 1,0 4,4 5,5 60,1 29,0

Source: Central Statistical Office according to representative population and household survey in 1995

Population by main sources of income

Category Urban Areas Rural AreasTotal- employed- self - employedOf which: - Private farms in agriculture- people living on social benefitsOf which:- pensions- disability pensions- unemployment benefits- other social benefits

10053, 79, 8

1,436, 5

15,811, 95, 00, 9

10034, 030, 9

27,435, 1

14,812, 55, 60, 8

Data: GUS, the latest census (1995), Statistical Year Book 1998

According to 1996 agricultural census 27.5% of the total Polish working population was employed in agriculture, game shooting and forestry, of which 23.5% worked on individual private farms.

The share of agricultural employment is decreasing at a slow rate, mainly due to lack of off-farm employment opportunities. For this reason about 70% of people working in agriculture are only part-time farmers.

Age distribution of the population

Category Urban x) Rural x) Farm population xx)

Total population 100 100 100Proportion of the population

of pre productive age (% of total) 24,7 28,8 27,3

Proportion of the populationof productive age (% of total) 61,9 55,7 56,0

Proportion of the populationof post-productive age (% of

total)13,4 15,5 16,7

x) Statistical Yearbook: state on the 31.12.1997xx) According to Central Statistical Office (GUS) - Polish Agricultural Census - 1996Productive age for women 18-59, for men: 18-64

a) Economically active persons - 64,9% (53,6% - in towns); of which:

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* Employed 59,1%(45,7%);* Unemployed 5,8% (7,9%);b) Economically inactive persons - 35,1% (46,4%).

The higher rate of economic activity for the rural population is primarily accounted for by employment in agriculture.

According to the Central Statistical Office rural unemployment (registered as well as unofficial) is estimated at 1.9 million people (of which 972 thousand are registered). The total rate of unemployment in rural areas is twice as high as in urban areas. This, however, is regionally differentiated. The areas dominated by former state farms have the highest levels of unemployment.

In conclusion: non-profit earnings are the most common source of income for the rural population, with wages from hired work in second place and earnings from employment on agricultural holdings in third place.

However, although many people have off - farm income, agriculture still represents an important additional source of income that cannot be neglected. The number of people with off - farm income of some sort is twice as high as that for whom agriculture is the main source of income.

The SME sector in Polish rural areas lacks sufficient development with only a small percentage of the rural population finding employment in it. A weak rate of start-ups in the SME sector was observed in rural areas over the period 1990-1999, and this occurred mainly in industrialised areas and along transport routes.

Regional differentiation of rural areas

Three macroregions in Poland may be identified when considering farm structures and agriculture:

Macroregion I - rural areas with prevalence of very small farms and rural population expecting off-farming employment Subregions a and b differ as regards the village industrialisation level measured by the number of off-farming jobs per 1 000 inhabitants

Macroregion II - areas with a prevalence of large-size farms requiring urgent settlement of the ownership aspects of the agricultural structure as well as a the farm development concept which would be adequate to the challenges of the region The unsettled ownership. Tenancy agreements, which do not oblige to the prevention protectof the ecological balance in agriculture. Under-invested large-size farms. Widespread cereal monoculture is leading the macroregion's agriculture to decline

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Macroregions of agriculture and rural areas development

Macroregion III - areas with athe prevalence of medium-size farms characterised at present by the inadequate progress of changes and at the same time looking forward to state incentives to activate the production and structural changes (in which especially incentives those aimed at the farm developmentvariety of functions) Subregions a. b and c differ as regards the cultural and technical level of farming

Macroregion I, covers the Podkarpackie, Małopolskie, Świętokrzyskie and Slaskie voivodships. This macroregion features fragmented farm structures with an average farm size between 2.5ha and 4ha. However, the percentage of rural households generating their income mainly from agriculture ranges from about 7,0% in Bielsko and Katowice regions to 31,0% in Przemyśl region, with an average for the Macroregion of 25%. The remaining 75% of rural households gain their income mainly from off-farm work, pensions and disability pensions (some under farmers' schemes). The reduction in employment in off-farm sectors in 1990-1993 period

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caused serious problems. Rural areas in Macroregion 1 account for some 30% of the total recorded Polish rural unemployment as well as about 40% of the hidden unemployment in agriculture. Despite good soils and a relatively favourable climate, agriculture in Macroregion 1 cannot employ surplus labour. Only 10 to 20% of the rural population (depending on local conditions) can generate their main income from agriculture. This situation prevails in Slaskie as well as in the Świętokrzyskie, Podkarpackie and Małopolskie voivodships. Some rural areas in Macroregion 1 specialise in horticultural production (e.g. Tymbark fruit processing company and vegetable and fruit growing in Sandomierz).

Macroregion II, covers the Warminsko-Mazurskie, Pomorskie, Zachodniopomorskie, Lubuskie and Dolnoslaskie voivodships. Here farm structures are determined by a substantial percentage of former state-owned land, leased out to private tenants. Macroregion 2 has a large concentration of former employees of state-owned farms (PGRs), who are at present mostly unemployed. The rural population in Macroregion 2 tends to have a poorer educational standard than the rural population elsewhere. Low family incomes and a resultant weak demand for consumer goods have a negative impact both by impeding the establishment of new companies and on the activities of existing local companies. Tax revenues collected by local authorities tend to be modest whilst they’re already is and should continue to be high social expenditure. In order to initiate the economic development of this Macroregion conditions for attracting a significant inward investment must be enhanced. Yet, to encourage the influx of capital, rapid improvements in the technical and social infrastructure are necessary.

Macroregion III, covers the Wielkopolskie, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Mazowieckie, Podlaskie, Lubelskie and Łódzkie voivodships. Agriculture in Macroregion 3 is relatively balanced in terms of its economic, environmental, demographic and social situation. Macroregion 3 has 2/3 of all Polish farm holdings. At least 400,000 of the farm holdings in Macroregion 3 are characterised by a relatively high capacity to adapt to the changing farming conditions. Additionally, Macroregion 3 is characterised by a relatively lower number of agri-food processing companies.

Level of technical, social and cultural infrastructure in rural areas

Technical infrastructure

The dispersed settlement pattern and resultant high costs of infrastructure provision in rural areas, along with generally low incomes derived from farming and high unemployment (registered and hidden) are responsible for the fact that infrastructure tends to be poorer in rural areas than in urban regions. This results in more difficult rural living and working conditions as compared with towns. In many places the road network is inadequate, energy lines require modernisation; telephones are lacking, water and sewerage facilities are considerably worse than in towns, whilst access to banks, post offices, schools, cultural institutions, as well as health care facilities (particularly specialist centres), is much more difficult. These difficulties significantly hamper the development of off-farm activities and discourage new settlement in rural areas.

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According to a representative population census carried out in 1995, 61.7% of the rural population had running water, toilets and bathrooms compared to 87.4% in towns whilst only 10.2% had access to the gas network and central heating compared to 59.9% in towns. In 1993-97 some 821,500 households obtained access to running water, but only 82,200 households got connected to a sewerage system.

The situation is worse on farm holdings, due mainly to the dispersed building layout and the high cost of installing connections together with insufficient funds to co-finance the costs. According to the common agricultural census held in 1996, only 48.0% of private farms use the public water system, 30.0% use an on-farm pipeline network, 21.0% - use their own wells and 1.0% must transport water to the farm. Only 3.7% of farm holdings are connected to a sewerage system, whilst 27.0% have no facilities at all i.e. they do not have any farm sewage facilities or sewage containers.

There are around 2,390 official dumping sites in rural areas covering an area of approximately 2,974 ha in total, of which 842 sites have isolation screens and the possibility of collecting wastewater in a total area of 1008 ha. Only 34.5% of farm holdings use official dumping sites.

At the end of 1998 the number of telephone subscribers in rural areas was 1,681,000, i.e. roughly four times less than in towns. There are 11.42 telephone subscribers per 100 rural people and in 1998 only 50% of rural households had telephones.

Only some 600,000 householders are connected to the gas system. In the first half of the 1990s the connecting rate varied between 35,000 and 57,000 annually. The rate of new connections declined to some 20,000 in 1997 due, inter alia, to the greater use of liquid bottled gas.

The condition of the electricity supply network in rural areas is another problem. The network, originally built mainly for lighting, is nowadays technically obsolete. Indeed, one third of the network needs urgent modernisation. The unsatisfactory technical condition of the network causes underrating of the energy parameters and increases the frequency of failures. The possibility of using three-phase devices (required for example for adequate fire protection) is also limited. This gives rise to another barrier to rural development.

Social infrastructure

Social infrastructure is underdeveloped and does not satisfy rural needs. The considerable progress made in the provision of technical infrastructure in the present decade has not been accompanied by improvements in social infrastructure. No progress has been made, in particular, in the provisions of cultural facilities, schools and health care facilities (e.g. the number of people per doctor is still four times higher in rural areas than in towns whilst the number of patients per one dentist is twice as high as in rural areas).

Teaching conditions are noticeably poorer in rural areas than in towns, while teaching standards are lower. Rural children have poor educational opportunities. They have

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only limited access to pre - school facilities and secondary schools. Also rural teachers tend to be less well qualified than their urban counterparts. Moreover rural children have little support from their parents who have little money or indeed ambition to encourage them. The choice of a secondary school depends on the availability of schools in the vicinity, facilities for transport or commuting to the school, failing which the existence of accommodation in a boarding school. Urban youths more often select a general secondary school whilst rural young people continue to prefer basic vocational schools.

There are big regional differences in the provision and quality of social infrastructure with the lowest level of development generally to be found in northeastern voivodships. On the whole, infrastructure development is related to urbanisation and industrialisation.

An important feature of Polish rural society is that it sustains Polish culture such as traditional family ways of life, a respect for property and traditional peasant family farming.

State of the environment in rural areas and their environmental functions

The quality of the environment in rural areas reveals high regional variations. Nonetheless, most rural areas have high quality physical environments, which allow organic production. Polish agriculture tends to be extensive; with the use of the mineral fertilisers being on average 2-3 times lower than in OECD countries. Whilst the use of pesticides is some 7 times lower than the mean OECD level.

Water and soil tend to be more degraded in large industrial areas than in rural districts. Research one by the Institute of Plant Cultivation, Fertilisation and Soil has shown that soil contamination with heavy metals, which makes production of plants for consumption, not recommended only applies to 3% of arable land in Poland, whilst on 2% of land plants for consumption should not be grown at all.

Water pollution originates mainly from municipal waste and animal production in the absence of leak proof dunghills. Some small farms still use wells that are frequently polluted by effluent running into them from farm buildings and living quarters.

About 20% of Poland's land area suffers from significant water and wind erosion. Another 30% of soils are subject to the process of excessive acidification. The level of soil humus is also decreasing contributing to soil degradation.

Other environmental threats result from past swamp drainage and include the lowering of the ground water level and excessive drying out of about 800,000 ha of arable land.

Additional ecological problems arose due to the 1997 and 1998 floods. The floods destroyed almost half a million ha with a loss of the upper fertile soil layer and increased soil acidity.

This range of problems clearly indicates that protection of agricultural environmental resources must form an inherent part of any comprehensive programme. Agriculture

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may be a source of environmental pollution, but on the other hand it permanently suffers from pollution coming from other sectors of the economy.

A comprehensive environmental policy in agriculture must encompass both human and farm resources with integrated environmental protection programmes including soil protection, biodiversity, flood protection, water management, urban and rural planning, a forestation and tree-planting programmes and promotion of organic farming.

The human dimension is the need to raise social awareness of the environment. People need to realise the material value and role of the environment in rural areas for sustainable development.Last but not least the Polish rural landscape is one of the least degraded in Europe. The value of its natural amenities may facilitate the development of agri-tourism and ecological methods of production.

Employment in farming sector and rural areas

According to quarterly studies on the economic activity of Polish population, the number of people employed in agriculture, hunting and forestry in 2 totalled 2 742 thousand people, i.e. 18.9% of the overall employment (with the average rate of 4.5% in the European Union in 1999), whereas the overall employment in rural areas totalled 5 596 thousand people, i.e. 38.5% of the total. Out of the total employment in agriculture, hunting and forestry, that in private sector included 2 658 thousand people with 2543 thousand employees in private farming. Hired labour totalled 213 thousand employees, including 13 thousand in private sector. Women accounted for 43.4% of the total labour in agriculture, forestry and hunting.

Of 2 7 3 thousand people out of work in Poland in 2, 1 181 thousand, i.e. 43.7% were living in the rural areas. The unemployment rate nation-wide was 15% in December 2. Farm holdings have absorbed unofficial or „hidden" unemployment, which, as estimated, amounts to about one million people.

Agro-tourism and tourism in rural areas

Intensive tourism business has been developing in many Polish regions for some time now, including tourists services related to farming activities and everyday life of the farm holding. This type of services has a tradition of many years going back to the period before World War II, when family holidays in the country became very popular amongst city dwellers. After a break of 5 years, that tradition was brought back to life at the onset of the 9 -is, which has provided the farmers with opportunities of earning some additional income, and the city dwellers could find out about folk culture and country life traditions that have been so carefully and lovingly preserved in many villages. In Poland, there are many rural areas of outstanding scenic beauty, where various types of active or relaxed holidays are offered to tourists to meet their individual preferences and expectations. Not surprisingly, many foreign tourists show growing interest in Polish rural areas. The European Union experts have recognised agro-tourism as one of the five major tourism products in Poland having a good chance of successful competition on international markets.

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Once the initial period was over, and it was the time when various initiatives to develop agro-tourism services were undertaken spontaneously in rural areas, the time has come to adjust service performance level in line with the expectations of prospective quests. Persons offering accommodation are organised in regional associations and over 4 regional units, which represent about 25 tourist service providers, have formed Polish Federation of Rural Tourism ”Guest welcoming farms”.

Drawing on the experience abundant in the EU Member State, work was launched to categorise accommodation facilities according to specific criteria developed under the framework of PHARE TOURiN II Programme. Business activities related to the development of agro-tourism services in rural areas are supported by the state in the form of tax abatements, micro-loans and soft-term credits. Furthermore, non-government organisation provides their support as well, such as training activities, conferences, and publications or catalogues promoting agro- and rural tourism in various regions in Poland.

Most agro-tourism farms are located in the region of Mazury, Suwalki, Kaszuby, Bory Tucholskie, Bieszczady, Sudeten and Lower Silesia.

Being a member of European Organisation of Rural Tourism - EUROGITES, the Federation of ”Guest welcoming farms” deals in the development and promotion of agro-tourism. Its mission includes advising members and promoting their interests as well as those of entire agro-tourism sector. To this end, many types of fairs and seminars are organised. Numerous publications promote specific regions and present the up-to-date selection of ”Guest welcoming farms”. As estimated, over 11 holdings welcome tourists in their farmhouses. National Federation has implemented service standardisation system, so that the guests taking their holiday at locations marked with the Federation logo have full guarantee that the service performance would be consistent with the offer. Expansion of tourist facilities meeting the state-of-the-art requirements and standards provide many farmers with a good opportunity to obtain additional or alternative source of income. As estimated, tourism services in rural areas provide 15.5 thousand jobs. Currently, much is being done to expand this type of business even further. In 2 5, about 55 thousand jobs are expected to be created in agro-tourism services, which will rank 5th as non-agricultural business activity in rural areas in terms of jobs supply (after manufacturing, trade, construction and transport services). Moreover, further growth of tourist services in terms of both, volume and quality, will pave the way for the expansion of other business activities in rural areas, which will significantly reduce tensions on the labour market.

Science and education

During the 1999-2 period, some government programmes were launched to increase educational opportunities for young people in rural areas.

Properly prepared school premises and well-developed didactic facilities are the pre-requisites to the rural education upgrading. Rural communities with low level of revenues can be provided with public budget support to refurbish and modernise elementary schools facilities, which includes equipment (computer hardware, access to Internet) and the arrangements for the school children transportation.

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With the establishment process underway, post-elementary schools (gymnasium type) have been staffed with highly qualified teaching personnel, and their didactic facilities are sufficient to prepare pupils for secondary education.

Basing on the network of best-organised gymnasium-type schools, the system of post-elementary education establishments in rural areas will be developed further.

Integrated projects with a view of establishing modern and publicly accessible gymnasium-type schools in rural areas, including those providing school education to several neighbouring communes, will be implemented thanks to public budget subsidies, soft term loans or subsidies to provide for the cost of bank loans. Preferential financing of sports facilities at schools will be ensured thanks to special funding channelled via Office for Physical culture and Sport.

Newly devised system of rural education is being set in place. Once the post elementary schools of gymnasium type have become fully operational, the process of organising the re-vamped secondary education system is going to be launched in 2.

New secondary schools of comprehensive type to be established in rural areas will be teaching major subjects grouped according to certain profiles. Full secondary education course will end with final exams, which will provide their graduates, i.e. young people residing in rural areas, with free access to education at tertiary level. Lyceum-type schools can be created basing on the system of gymnasium-type establishments, or by the way of transforming some of the existing secondary agricultural schools.

As envisaged, rural youth will be provided with more aid through a system of stipends, which will involve government institutions, NGO’s and local government authorities. Aid system will provide direct support to cover the cost of full board and accommodation, commuting to school, handbooks and any other schooling expenses. Since 1998, State Treasury Agricultural Property Agency has been implementing a programme of stipends for youngsters from housing estates on the former state owned farms.

Financial support to students from rural areas is aimed at the activation and promotion of capable young people from low-income rural families. To that end, the Agency for the Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture provides bank guarantees for student’s loans basing on the Act on Student Loans and credits of 17 July 1998. Depending on the farm family income level, the Agency can provide the collateral of up to 8 or 1 % of the total amount of credit used.

The effectiveness of the transformation process in rural sector is largely dependent on the efficiency of adult education, supplementary training and re-qualification activities. Lose co-operation amongst academic and scientific centres, agricultural schools and extension services as well as practical training and permanent education centres enhance the supplementary and expansive nature of educational activities as well as new forms and proposals to meet the precisely targeted needs of rural communities.

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Throughout the process of adult education, numerous professional supplementary training and qualifications improving activities have taken place at permanent education centres established in 1998. Now they have a quite significant role to play as they focus on the development of skills necessary to search for, and find employment in non-agricultural sectors of rural economy.

At 48 centres nation-wide, some of the most common activities include: - Basic level training sessions and courses to upgrade the know-how and economic

expertise amongst farmers, agricultural workers, including the farmers managing agricultural producer groups;

- Expertise improving courses to obtain certain vocational qualifications (qualification titles);

- Seminars, training courses, study tours distant learning sessions, exhibitions, display and demonstration events.

Education in Poland – law regulations and educational institutions

Legal situation of the educational system in Poland

Legal situation of the educational system in Poland, including continuing education of adults, is regulated with some deeds. The main are:

1. Deed from 12 th September 1990 about high education.

The deed regulates activity of the state universities. Universities are entitled to confer titles: bachelor degree, Master, physician, engineer, Master engineer and doctor.The deed creates possibility of organizing non-state universities.

2. Deed from 26 th June 1987 about high vocational schools.

This deed regulates activity high vocational schools i.e. schools, which are entitled to have only the right to confer titles bachelor degree or engineer.

3. Deed from 7 th September 1991 about the system of education.

This deed regulates activity of public primary schools, gymnasium schools and post-gymnasium schools, in particular activity of schools, which carry on vocational education.This deed creates possibility of foundation and carrying on non-government schools.

4. Disposition of Education Minister and Social Affairs and Labour Ministry from 12 th

October 1993 concerning rules and requirements of improving vocational competences and general adult education.

This disposition regulates all the matters concerning improving vocational competence and general education of adults, in school and out-school forms. Disposition include:

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- terminology connected with improving adult vocational competence and general education,

- rules of financing the improvement of vocational competence and general education costs by institutions and rules of consents to training leave,

- definition, who can organise education in order to improving competence and general education and rules of organising and carrying on such an education,

- definition rules of conferring titles of vocational competence.

5. Disposition of Education Minister from 20 th October 1992 about Centres of Continuing Education.

The disposition regulates the whole of matters concerning creating and activity Centres of Continuing Education.

According to Act about high education from 1990 basic tasks of universities include education for completing general and technical knowledge of the persons which have vocational titles and practise practical professions.

According to Act about vocational universities from 1997 basic tasks of vocational universities include education for completing technical knowledge and vocational skills.

According to Disposition about Centres of Continuing Education from 1992 basic tasks of the Centre include education, additional training and improvement adults in school and out-school forms.

Institutions engaged in adult continuing education

Adult continuing education in Poland take place in school and out-school forms.

Continuing education is carrying in:1. universities and vocational universities,2. centres of vocational education,3. schools,4. works,5. scientific institutions and scientific-research institutions,6. other educational institutions (associations, foundations, societies and legal-

persons and manual-persons,7. Churches and other religious institutions and religious associations.

Adult continuing education, according to rules in force in Poland, may take place both by public (government) institutions and organisation and private (non-government) organisations.

Type of the institution Legal status of the institution

Educational forms

universities public and non-public school and out-school

vocational universities public and non-public school and out-

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school post-gymnasium public and non-public school centres of continuing education public school and out-

schoolother educational institutions public and non-public out-school

Formal continuing education in Poland is realized in school and out-school forms.

Education in school forms definition, means improving adult vocational competences or general education through studies in the school (primary or post-primary) or at the university (in daily, evening or extern system) and ending with diploma e.g. grammar school for adults or vocational school for adults.

Education in out-school forms definition, means adult education and additional training within post-graduates studies, during courses, seminars, at vocational or specialization practices, vocational training, steered self-education. Education in out-school forms is realized in centres of continuing education, schools, staff training centres, research centres, works, associations, foundations. Ending the out-school education form should be confirmed with diploma, certificate or confirmation.

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SPAIN

Introduction

The rural areas classically have been defined based on the number of inhabitants, avoiding its socio-cultural characteristics. These areas are more and heterogeneous than the urban one, existing a great disparity between isolated nuclei of few inhabitants and populations near the city.

The progressive industrialization and the improvement of the communication between both scopes have created a ampler common space for all. In spite of it, the differences persist in damage of rural areas.

THE RURAL AREAS: DEMOGRAPHIC, GEOGRAPHIC AND SOCIOCULTURAL ASPECTS

1.1 Social and cultural characteristics of the rural population

In Spain the National Institute of statistic (INE) defines as rural habitat to those zones where the municipalities have an inferior population to the 2,000 inhabitants; like semi urban or semi rural, between the 2,000 and 10,000 inhabitants; and like urban, to the municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants.

The rural habitat maintains its importance in Spain, mainly around the mountain areas. In Galicia, most of the old kingdom of Leon and in good part of the Systems Central and Iberian (Ávila, Segovia and Teruel), more than half of the population lives in these areas. The Cantabrian coast, Palencia, Towns, Salamanca, Cáceres, Soria, Guadalajara, River basin and the Pyrenean one (Huesca and Lérida) have more of the third part of rural population. Finally, with at least the fifth part of rural population, are Albacete, Granada, Murcia, Almeria, Navarre, Gerona, the Rioja and the Canary archipelago. We will try to make a review of the demographic evolution 50 years in the rural nuclei that will contribute to understand the characteristics of the rural population with which we are working at the present time.

1.2 Evolution of the rural population in Spain

The emigration characterized the demographic phenomena in the rural habitat already from centuries last, in which most of the transatlantic emigrants belonged to rural societies. The successory practices tended to maintain the unit of agrarian operation forcing to emigrate to those of the inheritance separated of the activity.

By the end of century XIX and beginnings of the XX, the strong industrialization produced a human outflow from the towns to the cities. The Civil War stopped this process, with one slight re-ruralization, but later the low level of Spanish industrialization changed the direction of the emigration, that went to the European metropolitan agglomerations. It is between 1955 and 1965, in a new process of industrialization, when the rural depopulation reaches its highest intensity. In addition, the population emigrant is active and young, and they correspond already to a generation by itself little (the been born ones in period 1935 - 1940) with

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predominance of feminine sex, which entails strong imbalances in the rural population, aged and with a strong decrease of the capacity of generational relief. Thus, at the beginning of the decade of the 80, the panorama is devastating, with a vegetative growth negative.

Nevertheless, then an evident slowing down of the migratory flow from the rural areas to the city, that comes given, on the one hand, by the exhaustion of the rural manual labour, but mainly by the loss of attractive of the city takes place, with high indices of unemployment. In this context (empty towns and saturated cities) an inverse movement takes place, with the return of the old residents (pensioners or pre-retired with familiar bonds or small properties) and the increasing attraction of rural areas on new social groups. These groups have great interest, since they are inhabitants coming from the cities that look for greater quality of life and generate new nuclei (urbanizations). In this process of decentralization first the suburban strips with better channels fill with communication, but more ahead the transport means availability and the greater labour flexibility of high the middle-class allow these to accede to more distant places. It is about, therefore, people with greater cultural and economic level, dependent of the metropolitan areas, in contrast to the native population, aged, with smaller rooted income and more to the place. The coexistence between these groups is not free of confliction, since its arrival can increase in price the cost of the life and can affect the social cohesion.

The native ones must look for alternatives the agrarian employment, working great part of them outside their municipality or making the work at home, mainly the feminine group. In the moved away countryside more, these displacements have temporary character, of long-haul (to tourist centres, harvestings, etc.) the agrarian operation is plus a complementary entrance to the one of the main work.

The rural world appears in the 90 like a fragmented and heterogeneous world. The rupture of the relation between rurality and agriculture, the diversification of activities, and the substitution of the urban concept of the rural thing like place of delay by quality of life, offers a world of strong resistances that is lost its unicity and independence.

1.3. Characteristics of the rural population

A series of social and cultural characteristics not always exists that define the rural population with greater or smaller degree of "rurality", depending as large as the municipalities. The progress in means and channels of communication has diminished the social and cultural isolation of these populations, that equipped them in the past with a clear homogeneity that no longer exists.

Geographic boundary: in rural areas the population locates, with greater or smaller dispersion, in a geographic frame delimited good, which makes easier the professional to know its population and its problematic one.

Conditions of life: differences with the urban nuclei exist less and less. Nowadays it is difficult to find potable water deficiencies, electrical light, paving, sewage system or good communications (telephone, highways). The economic necessities more are limited than in the urban nuclei although, in general, and reason why already it has

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commented, in the last decades has taken place an impoverishment of the inhabitants of the rural nuclei.

Integration of the labour and social activity in the surroundings of the town: the traditional rural population develops almost all its labour activity in the town, with a closed economy, generally agriculturist/cattle dealer, or another type of works in the own home. This not always is therefore, since it has commented, often the rural inhabitants must look for its sustenance outside its municipality, and in addition in the rural nuclei next to the urban ones, attends an increase of population transferred from these in search of tranquillity and quality of life, with a social and labour dependency of the great large cities.

RURAL SITUATION INSIDE ARAGON REGION

Aragon is the most depopulated region in Spain in rural areas. The immigration has been much more drastic than it in any another region of Spain.

As result of all this, the index of depopulation is higher by what a special qualification has been requested to the European Community inside the aims for the distribution of the structural Funds, since its situation is very close to that of some regions in Sweden.

The rural areas: education

The identification, from a sociological point of view, of the rural areas goes handy of the location of populations of, generally, a little number of inhabitants, dedicated mainly to agriculture or the cattle ranch and possessors of certain differentiating cultural characteristics and certain forms of life that define the rural model by contrast to the urban model. The term Rural School, understood in its strict sense, makes reference to a assembly of ways of schooling that are specific of those geographic areas denominated countryside and have, among others, the following characteristics:

They correspond to centres where the ratio student/professor is low or very low.

The form of group of the students usually is not by courses, but by cycles or even by stages, which makes difficult the work of the teaching staff who is to take care of students of different ages and different contents from lessons.

In many cases it is the last public service that stays in the corresponding locality - with five students of infantile and primary the rural schools stay open reason why its transfer to other populations generates between the neighbouring feelings of abandonment and is seen as the advance payment of a definitive decline of the town.

The scholastic institution has difficulties for the access to the cultural goods what causes certain isolation in its pupils.

In Spain the educative attention to the rural areas has evolved in the last decades, in the sense progressively to resign to ways of scholastic concentration in benefit of other organizational models that offered possible the educative service next to the residence places of their beneficiaries.

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2.1. Historical and legal approach

The terms "education of adults" and "permanent education" are concepts that have been mixed in many occasions, causing confusions that have distorted the real content and implicit the own meaning in each one of them.

Nevertheless, for some decades, one has been coming developing a clarification attempt that has taken to most of specialists to the following precision: the permanent education serves as referential frame, not only to the education of adults, but also to the assembly of the educative process, when considering like "system of the educative systems". This idea, in principle quite clear and specific, locks up many debates, deep and wise theoretical reflections and, of course, doubtless contradictions, present mainly in political-educative Literature.

However, to delimit the field of studies of so ample subject, we will try to make a brief historical approach to which it has been the Education of Adults in Spain, treating to deepen a little more in the two decades between the General Law of Education of 1,970 and the LOGSE of 1.990During century XIX, as much at normative level as of studies and theoretical reflections, a considerable preoccupation by the promotion of the education of the adult people has existed. Without entering details, own of one more an investigation deeper than the one of the present study, we can mention some illustrative examples of the previous asseveration: the law Someruelos of 1938 or the law Moyano of 1857 in the legislative plane, and the studies of Puig Sevall, Fontanalls of the Castle or the Bulletin of the I.L.E. in a reflective-theoretical plane and of analysis.

In century XX, it will be the Republic the one that promotes the education of the adult people in an important way, in a context of ambitious intentions, truncated by the confliction and the Civil War.

In the post-war period, given the enormous number of illiterate existing in Spain, the Francoism made of the campaigns of alphabetisation its high-priority objective in the matter of education of adults, having treated repair the deficiencies of the basic training, with an approach centred in a primary education, so as the WHITE BOOK would express in 1.969.

We must say that, parallelly to the Ministry of Education, there was a series of institutions public and private, that promoted a very important work in the field of the education of the adult people, with contents more bound to the training and professional promotion, which was to adapt to the structural changes that in the Fifties and sixty our country underwent.

The principle of the permanent education was considered by White Book of 1.969, in its analysis and projection of future. In the same way, the LGE of 1.970, incorporated it like "an ample watchtower from which the law has constructed a flexible system, only and interrelated", in words of Manuel Puelles. The education of adults it is regulated specifically by articles 43, 44 and 45 of the mentioned law, under the specific denomination of Permanent Education of Adults (EPA), considered like a level more of the educative system. This "" permanent "adult" and mixture, weaken the meaning attributable to the permanent education, giving to understand that it is

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just like education of adults. White Book of Adults (1.986) would become position of the situation of a very graphical way: "it is not necessary to confuse permanent education with permanent schooling. Under protection of the LGE, starts up the Program of Permanent Education of Adults with the Ministerial order of 26 of July of 1.973. The basic and high-priority objective of the Program was to provide an elementary training to the people who at their moment and by different causes could not complete the E.G.B. In the Ministerial order of 14 of February of 1.974, the Pedagogical directions for Program EPA are regulated, which meant (in essence) an adaptation of the E.G.B. to the adult people.

On the other hand, it agrees to make a special mention to the implantation in cases, already the consolidation in others, of remote education in our country, under protection of the LGE. Although this education was not specifically for adults, yes who we can affirm that a good number of adults has followed it. The R. Decree 2310 of 18 of August of 1.972, meant the legal beginning of the walking of the UNED. Three years more, with the Decree of 9 of October of 1.975 the INBAD is created (remote Comprehensive school). It is necessary also to emphasize the important number of initiatives of nonformal education which public or private institutions carry out during the Seventies, whose purpose was not the simple expedition of a title, but the search of an integral development of aptitudes, participation, training, etc... After the Constitution of 1.978, with a new political and territorial order, important plans arose from performance by initiatives of Independent Communities, City councils and other institutions. Such plans meant an attempt of overcoming from the nonformal or regulated education of the performance that until that moment had developed EPA(Permanent Education of Adults).

This situation, impelled by a dynamic and more and more modern society, generates the necessity to make one more a ampler supply from the educative system. The socialist administration makes echo of it, in government from 1982 (in fact 1983), which it will impel a considerable work of analysis and debates on the education of adults in Spain, that culminates with the appearance in 1986 of already mentioned White Book, in that settled down a series of lines of future performance for the education of the adult people. Three years later, the Ministerial order of 8 of May of 1989 will persecute a transforming model, turning to the Centres of Adults something more than institutions senders of the Graduated student, to be centres in which socio-cultural, occupational necessities and of training and professional rectification are impelled and satisfied. In 1990 the LOGSE is promulgated, that gathers the new conception of the Education of Adults in Title III. This new legal frame gathers the principles of the permanent education, but it does not incorporate the Education of Adults to the Educative System, since it is not including in the Lessons of General nor special regime, delimited in art. 3º of the Preliminary Title. Therefore the education of Adults will be defined in terms of scholastic and academic policy of social and cultural promotion, although their involvement with the educative system is not very important, "trying to obtain a type of post obligatory education that priority to the people with deficiencies of basic formation or difficulties of labour reintegration adapts to all the social groups and all the ages, giving and facilitating concrete supplies with diverse conducive performances for a reason or purpose".

Conclusion

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DIRECTIVES FOR THE REFORMATION OF THE EDUCATION OF ADULTS IN SPAIN

From the enunciated general principles in the declaration of UNESCO, it turns out originating to complete this White Book with the summary of the basic directives for a reform of the Education of Adults in Spain, that will have to be framed in this perspective of Permanent Education in order to insert the Education of Adults in the same logic that all the educative system without it constitutes a marginal or isolated action.

1. The process of reform of the Education of Adults will have to register in the one of rearrangement of the educative system as a whole and more in concrete in the Post-obligatory Education, which supposes to establish the dividing one of ages in the 16 years.

2. The Education of Adults will have like objective to facilitate an integral training in three senses:

a) Integration of the different areas of knowledge.b) Integration of the educative activities in the personal and global experience

of the students.c) Narrow relation of the training with social scope of the students.

3. This integral character of the Education of Adults demands to associate the four following areas of knowledge:

a) Training oriented to the work.b) Civic training for the exercise of the rights and responsibilities.c) Training for the personal developmentd) As essential foundation of all of them, the general training, that when it was

not obtained in the appropriate age, constitutes an indispensable pre-requirement of compensating type.

4. The previous thing implies the following changes in the traditional structure of the Education of Adults in Spain:

a) A curricular design based on the system of modules or "able to be capitalized" training units, of such form that the students can become their own training program based on their necessities and interests.

b) An organization and evaluation adapted to the ways of own thought and conduct of the adults.

c) To articulate the two modalities of education of adults (actual and at distance) without they constitute separated networks.

5. The new model of education of adults supposes a conception different as far as the space unit from reference; in the successive thing it will be the project of territorial base and not the teaching institution, circle or classroom of adults that will assume main protagonism taking care of the demands specific of a determined region, municipality or district and assigning the totality of human resources and available materials for this aim.. In a progressive way the function of the educative administrations will be moved from the direct management to the one to plan, to impel and to supervise the projects and, consequently, to finance partially the

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performances via current transferences instead of assuming an increasing load of expenses of personnel in its group of civil employees..

6. In addition to the reviewed functions, the educative administrations in their respective territorial scopes, will have to structure the following technical services in order to guarantee the necessary support to the sector and to assure one better adjustment the lessons to the real necessities of the adults in their own means:a) Renovation of methods and contents.b) Innovation in materials and didactic equipments.c) Advanced officer training courses for training of adults.d) Creation of documentation centres, information and investigation that could be integrated in a training communications net managed by the Ministry of Education in connection with specialized international organisms in the subject of education of adults.

7. As far as the competential distribution between the different powers public, it would be established as it follows:

a) It corresponds to the Government: To regulate the basic norms of the Education of Adults in Spain. In the regulated teachings, to fix the conditions for the obtaining of the titles equivalent to the obligatory levels, being made through a homological test destined to evaluate the intellectual capacities and aptitudes of the adult students when they wish to be put under the same one. To establish the general frame of coordination between the different implied departments, as well as the criteria of collaboration with the other public administrations.

b) It corresponds to the Ministry of Education: In those Autonomous Regions that lack total educative competitions in regard to their statutes of autonomy, corresponds to the Ministry of Education to such plan, to impel and to supervise to the accomplishment of programs of Education of Adults, which will be designed in agreement with the specific demands of local base or district, assigning itself to the totality of the human resources and available materials for this aim. The execution of the programs will be able to take place directly through the own provincial organization of the Ministry of Education or in collaboration with other ministerial departments, autonomic or local administrations and other public or private institutions through the corresponding agreements.

c) It corresponds to the Autonomous Regions with total competitions in the matter of education and in its respective territorial scopes, to organize the education of adults by means of programs whose objective is the one to provide an integral training of basic, occupational, cultural and civic character educative, as much for lessons regulated and not regulated like in the modalities actual and at a distance.

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FRANCE

Area - comparative: slightly less than twice the size of Colorado

Land boundaries: total: 2,889 km border countries: Andorra 56.6 km, Belgium 620 km, Germany 451 km, Italy 488 km, Luxembourg 73 km, Monaco 4.4 km, Spain 623 km, Switzerland 573 km

Population: 59,329,691 (July 2000 est.)

Age structure: 0-14 years: 19% (male 5,719,502; female 5,448,608) 15-64 years: 65% (male 19,345,269; female 19,322,902) 65 years and over: 16% (male 3,849,783; female 5,643,627) (2000 est.)

Population growth rate: 0.38% (2000 est.) Birth rate: 12.27-births / 1,000 population (2000 est.) Death rate: 9.14-deaths / 1,000 population (2000 est.) Net migration rate: 0.66 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2000 est.)

Sex ratio: at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.68 male(s)/female total population: 0.95 male(s)/female (2000 est.)

Languages: French 100%, rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish)

Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 99% male: 99% female: 99% (1980 est.)

Economy – overview

France's economy combines modern capitalistic methods with extensive, but declining, government intervention. The government retains considerable influence over key segments of each sector, with majority ownership of railway, electricity, aircraft, and telecommunication firms. It has been gradually relaxing its control over these sectors since the early 1990s. The government is slowly selling off holdings in France Telecom, in Air France, and in the insurance, banking, and defence industries. Meanwhile, large tracts of fertile land, the application of modern technology, and subsidies have combined to make France the leading agricultural producer in Western Europe. Persistently high unemployment will continue to pose a major problem for the government; a 35-hour workweek is being introduced. France

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has shied away from cutting exceptionally generous social welfare benefits or the enormous state bureaucracy, preferring to pare defense spending and raise taxes to keep the deficit down. France joined 10 other EU members to launch the euro on 1 January 1999.

GDP: purchasing power parity - $1.373 trillion (1999 est.) GDP - real growth rate: 2.7% (1999 est.) GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $23,300 (1999 est.) GDP - composition by sector: agriculture: 3.3% industry: 26.1% services: 70.6% (1998)

Labor force: 25.4 million (1994)

Labor force - by occupation: services 69%, industry 26%, agriculture 5% (1995)

Unemployment rate: 11% (1999 est.)

Budget: revenues: $325 billion expenditures: $360 billion, including capital expenditures of $NA (1999 est.)

Industries: steel, machinery, chemicals, automobiles, metallurgy, aircraft, electronics, mining; textiles, food processing; tourism

Industrial production growth rate: 2% (1999 est.)

Telephones - main lines in use: 34.86 million (yearend 1998) Telephones - mobile cellular: 11.078 million (yearend 1998) Telephone system: highly developed domestic: extensive cable and microwave radio relay; extensive introduction of fiber-optic cable; domestic satellite system international: satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (with total of 5 antennas - 2 for Indian Ocean and 3 for Atlantic Ocean), NA Eutelsat, 1 Inmarsat (Atlantic Ocean region); HF radiotelephone communications with more than 20 countries

The educational system

The French Republic has 60 million inhabitants, living in the 22 regions of metropolitan France and four overseas departments (1.7 million). Despite the fact that the population is growing slightly (up 0.4% a year), the number and proportion of young people under 25 are, however, falling: there are now fewer than 19 million of them in metropolitan France, i.e. 32% of the total population, compared with 40% around 1970 and 35% at the time of the 1990 census. France is seeing a slow aging of the population — less marked however than in other neighboring countries (Germany and Italy), especially as the annual number of births is currently increasing slightly.

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15 million pupils and students, i.e. a quarter of the population, are in the education system. Just over 2 million are in higher education.

In 1999, France's GDP was close to FF 9,000 billion (EUR 1,330 billion), i.e. FF 150,000 (EUR 22,000) per inhabitant. Of this total, just over FF 600 billion (EUR 95 billion) were devoted to initial or continuing education: 7.2% of GDP. As far as school education spending is concerned, France is in a middle position, behind the Nordic countries (Sweden and Denmark), but fairly significantly ahead of Italy and Japan.

France has a workforce today of 26 million, of whom fewer than 2 million are unemployed: the unemployment rate recently fell to below 9%. 6% of the labor force (about 1.5 million jobs, including 1 million civil servants and local government officers) is undergoing training.

Around 13 million pupils attend school in France. The system is a unified one, whose present general structure (primary schools, collèges, lycées) was gradually put in place during the 1960s and 1970s, ending the formerly more compartmentalized system which was based on a clear separation between primary and secondary education.

Since the 1970s, France has also had an outstanding record with respect to the development of pre-school education; all 3- to 5-year-olds can go to nursery classes.

Since 1967, school attendance has been compulsory for those from 6 to 16 years of age. France has 60,000 primary schools catering to pupils during their first five years of formal education: the first three years (CP - cours préparatoire - and CEl/CE2 - cours élementaire 1 and 2) provide a grounding in the basic skills. The next stage - CM1/CM2 (cours moyen 1 and 2) takes the children up to the end of primary school.

Secondary schooling is divided into two successive stages, known as cycles. From 11 to 15 years, almost all children now attend a collège, taking them from form 6 (sixième) to form 3 (troisième) (1). Since 1975 there has been a single mixed-ability collège for all pupils regardless of their level of achievement. After form 3, they move onto a general, technical or vocational lycée. These prepare pupils for the corresponding baccalauréat examinations (referred to as le bac), which they normally take at the age of 18.

Decisions about pupils (repeating years, moving up to a higher class, changing course) are taken through a procedure involving a dialogue between the school (teachers, administrative and ancillary staff) and the families and pupils. Although the teachers give their opinions in what is known as a "class council" — consisting of representatives among pupils, teachers and parents — parents can appeal against a decision and demand (depending on the pupil's level) that the pupil move up rather than repeat the year, or repeat the year rather than do a course they do not wish their son or daughter to pursue. In every school, there are specialist counsellors to help pupils, parents and teachers resolve any problems they may encounter.

Today, form 3 (which is the final year at collège) is the first point at which children have a choice regarding some of the subjects they wish to study, and the direction

87


they would like their curriculum to take (although they must choose a foreign language in form 6, and another in form 4).

The vast majority of pupils attend schools, which are overseen by the Ministry of National Education. However, around 100,000 (suffering from various disabilities) go to special schools run under the aegis of the Ministry of Health, and 200,000 go to agricultural lycées (technical and vocational courses). Finally, 300,000 others, aged 16+ undergo apprenticeships (work contracts), which — since the 1987 reform — can prepare them for all types of vocational qualification.

Alongside the ordinary school education system, there are also specialist or adapted classes, which are often integrated into primary and secondary schools. Such programs include the CLIS — classes which act as bridges to bring children back into the mainstream system, and the SEGPA — adapted general and vocational education sections designed particularly for children and adolescents having difficulty at school due to psychological, emotional or behavioral problems, and for slow learners. Similar curricula are also found in special schools, particularly those under the aegis of the Health Ministry. The aim is to get these children (around 5% of the pupils in any one year group) to achieve a minimum skills level: the CAP (certificat d'aptitude professionnel), which sanctions training in a specific vocational skill.

Schools managed under the aegis of the National Education Ministry may be public or private. The private sector educates approximately 15% of primary school and 20% of secondary school pupils, percentages that have remained stable over the past decade. The bulk of private schools are Catholic, having contracts with the State (which inter alia pays their staff salaries). Families of the fewer than 50,000 pupils in private schools without such contracts pay high fees.

For twenty years, youngsters leaving school without adequate qualifications have been the hardest hit by the increase in unemployment. In the mid 1990s, the best-qualified young people, relatively spared until then, began to find things significantly more difficult. Since 1998, they have, however, been the first to benefit from the general improvement in the first-job market.

A person's future position in society is in fact — to a fairly large extent — dependent on his/her academic achievements. Five years after the end of their studies, people with degrees are five times more likely to hold an executive or middle-ranking managerial position than those who started work immediately after the baccalauréat. The bulk of the people in top jobs in both the engineering field and the professions hold diplomas from a grande école (prestigious higher education institution with a competitive examination) or have successfully completed a third university cycle.

While this is reassuring in that it demonstrates the value accorded to academic qualifications, it is also a matter for concern, since the inequalities often picked up very early on in school — and overcome with difficulty — have a lasting effect on an individual's future working life. The aim of continuing education, vital for what is now known as "life-long learning", was originally to offer a second chance, attenuating or correcting the legacy of an inadequate basic education, but it only very imperfectly fulfills this role. At the same time, the idea is gaining ground that experience in a trade is as valid as qualifications obtained at school or in higher education. But the

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procedures for validating vocational achievements — brought about by the 1985 and 1993 acts — still face serious obstacles. In 1998, only 12,000 people managed to validate the achievements of their experience, principally in university education. Today, a Bill on Social Modernization envisions an augmentation of the present system so as to offer a genuine second chance to those whose limited skill sets were not detected at school.

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DENMARK

Rural areas in Denmark.

Denmark is a small country, and that naturally affects the concept of rural areas. Only app. 43.000 square kilometres in size, the distance between towns are fairly short and many rural communities hence function as dormant communities for the nearest bigger town, in that way that the Danish labour force in general spend app. 1 hour a day commuting from home to work.

Thus it is recommendable that in order to talk about rural areas in Denmark you have two parameters of definitions: 1) The geographical, statistical aspect, and 2) The socio-economical aspect.

Geographical rural areas

Denmark has 5.5 million inhabitants (2001) of whom 14,7 percent live in communities with less than 200 people. As mentioned above there is a thin line between what is rural areas and what defines urban and suburban areas, due to the littleness of the country and the growth of the urban areas during the last four decades. A vast number of people living in the “rural” areas of less than 200 inhabitants do not work in the local area, but in the nearest towns.

The rural areas in Denmark have, like in most countries, been closely connected with agriculture, but in the last decades the development in agriculture has resulted in a radically declination in the number of farms – and thus the employment and the number of families who are rooted in agribusiness has waned too. As table 1 shows.

Table 1. Number of farms in Denmark 1970 –1999

19701978198619941999

148.512125.52189.65969.34657.831

These days additional 10 farms are discontinued each day, and the forecast says that there will be only 10.000 full-time farms left in the year 2005, and app. 45.000 farms are part time farms as the families have a supplement take-home pay from jobs elsewhere.26

But statistically, geographical nearly 15 percent of the Danish population live in traditional rural areas.

26 cf. De danske Landboforeninger (Danish Farmers´ Union)

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Socio-economic rural areas

Denmark has a mounting number of people feeling socially excluded and marginalized from the rest of society, and they feel unable to comprehend the complexity of the political agenda, and thus does not take part in the democratic debate and tradition. A common nominator# for this group is that they have a low degree of education, most of them have only attended grammar school, and many of them either work in low paid, low profile jobs, such as an unskilled labour force in cu mare production (25,4 %), or they are out of work, living on the lowest supplementary benefit (43,3 %).27 The tendency is that in the years to come, the demand for the low educated and untrained labour force is lessening.

At the same time the statistics tell us that 61 % of adults attending adult education classes are either skilled or well-educated adults or pensioners, 31 % are recruited from the group of unemployed, and finally only 9 percent are representing the above mentioned group.28

Looking at political stand of this marginalized group (nearly 18 percent of the Danish population – 990.000 people), the vast majority feel connected to the politics of the ultra right wing parties.29

Recognizing that the attention of adult education should be on the low skilled, low educated groups of people in the Danish society, it is interesting to draw attention to that, as shortly mentioned, this group does live both in conventionally rural areas, the countryside, and in suburban and urban areas. Considering the fact that for instance a huge number of excluded and marginalized people are immigrants, living mostly in suburban and urban facilities, this calls for a wider definition of the term “rural areas.”

You have to take into account the way the development has been in Denmark, and in particular in the typical rural areas in Jutland and Lolland, Falster etc. Previously there was, as in most countries, a clear connection between agriculture as area-bailiff and culture creating forces in local areas. Today, in a social-economic and cultural sense, the rural areas consists of a minority of people living from cu mare industry (especially fishing and farming related fields of industry), and a majority of people with a way of life, norms and values on way to or from other social models. The traditional dichotomy “rural-urban” consequently seems to have lost its real substance in Denmark. The term “rurban” is now more adequate,30 considering also that every year 865.000 people relocate themselves.31

This does not rule out the fact that the further you come from the big cities of Denmark (Copenhagen, Århus, Aalborg, Odense, Esbjerg), the lower is the general level of education among the inhabitants. For example in Ringkøbing Fjord area (The bay area of Ringkøbing), on the western bank of Jutland, traditionally a remote rural area, the level of education is generally lower than in rest of Denmark:

Table 2. Attained educational level among adult (20-66 years of age), in percentages.27 cf. Amternes og kommunernes forskningsinstitut, 2002 (The research institute of the Municipalities)28 cf. Socialkommissionen 1998 (The Commission of Social Matters)29 cf. Institut for Politisk Analyse 2002 (Institute of political analysis)30 cf. Hanne Tanvig, head of Danish Centre for Rural Research and Development 31 cf. Danmarks Statistik, p. 46, 2001.

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Grammar

school

Normal

high

school

Mercantile

school

Craftsman

school

Short higher

education

Middle long

higher

education

Long higher

education

(University etc)

In all

Ringkøbing bay area

41,4 1,9 2,3 39,6 5,5 7,7 1,6 100,0

Rest of Denmark 36,0 5,8 2,6 35,5 5,8 9,0 5,4 100,0

Conclusion

Therefore SOFI Foundation recommends that for this project the focal point is rather on a socio-economic aspect of rural areas than the limited geographical, statistical aspect, due to the fact that the problem field is rather on low education and low status jobs, than on where you live. In Denmark the problems of attracting adults to engage in adult education are more socio-economic than solely geographical.

Adult education – history and today

There seems to be a great task for the adult education system in order to catch the attention of this group unused to attend classes in life long learning as this group are. But how do you attract people who feel excluded, people with either learning disabilities or cultural and language barriers etc?

Denmark has a 150-year-old tradition of adult education, life long learning programmes, due to the practice of the Grundtvigian folk high school. The task for Grundtvig and his successors were a bit the same as the task in front of us today, namely to get the low or non-educated people living in rural Denmark to attend classes. The result became a mix of courses in for example better cultivating techniques, harvesting etc, combined with the establishing of a forum for an open, democratic debate, encouraged by classes in Danish history and Danish literature. In short the folk high school combined courses in basic craftsmanship with intellectual subjects. Even more important the high school’s pedagogical strategy was focusing on the individual needs and wants of the each participant. The philosophy seemed to be that everybody has something to contribute with. The folk high school hence gave birth to the democratic process that went on building the Danish tradition of committing in debates and all sorts of unions, housing communities, athletic clubs, debate societies, allotments, parents councils etc.

The situation of adult education of the low educated today is calling for attention and new thinking, due to the facts that only one third of this group attend courses, and even more noticeable, 46 percent of those who begin classes, drop out before time.32

This result is alarming in itself, but when considered that a huge group of the group are unemployed and therefore most often only attend classes because they have to in order to obtain their supplementary benefit, it speaks for itself.

Considering also the fact that the amount of low or non-educated inhabitants in Denmark in the years to come will increase remarkably, due to immigration from Third World countries, and the fact that the “Danish” population in the same period is 32 cf. Metroxpress, 06.11.02

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going to shrink33, there is a strong need for rethinking the adult education system and the ways of attracting these disadvantaged group to enter the school system.

33 cf. Weekendavisen, d. 01.11.02 (based on a report from The Rockwool Fond).

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CHAPTER 3NEEDS ANALYSIS IN THE PROJECT

Adult education should be based on the following principles:

(a) It should be based on the needs of the participants and make use of their different experiences in the development of adult education; the most educationally underprivileged groups should be given the highest priority within a perspective of collective advancement;(b) It should rely on the ability and determination of all human beings to make progress throughout their lives both at the level of their personal development and in relation to their social activity;(c) It should awaken an interest in reading and develop cultural aspirations;(d) It should stimulate and sustain the interest of adult learners, appeal to their experience, strengthen their self-reliance, and enlist their active participation at all stages of the educational process in which they are involved;(e) It should be adapted to the actual conditions of everyday life and work and take into account the personal characteristics of adult learners, their age, family, social, occupational or residential background and the way in which these interrelate;(f) It should seek the participation of individual adults, groups and communities in decision-making at all levels of the learning process; including determination of needs, curriculum development, program implementation and evaluation and should plan educational activities with a view to the transformation of the working environment and of the life of adults;(g) It should be organized and operated flexibly by taking into account social, cultural, economic and institutional factors of each country and society to which adult learners belong;(h) It should contribute to the economic and social development of the entire community;(i) It should recognize as an integral part of the educational process the forms of collective organization established by adults with a view to solving their day-to-day problems;(j) It should recognize that every adult, by virtue of his or her experience of life, is the vehicle of a culture which enables him or her to play the role of both learner and teacher in the educational process in which he or she participates.

(RECOMMENDATION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ADULT EDUCATION, 1976)

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ROMANIA

General consideration

The SAERA project appeared as a necessity due to the fact that if in the urban areas in Romania in the last years the adult education field appeared, in the rural areas the continuous adult education is almost inexistent, situation similar to the one in Poland and Hungary. Even if in other European countries like Spain, France and above all Denmark where the adult education has a strong development, the differences between the urban and rural areas are still notable.

In these condition, it is obvious the necessity to create a national strategy and a European level strategy regarding the adult education in the rural areas, strategy which should be in harmony with the existent needs.

The research objectives

General objective: The segmentation of rural adults and the identification of the adequate needs of adult education in the Banat and Trainsilvania regions, Romania

Specific objectives:- The segmentation of rural adults coming from Banat and Transilvania regions,

Romania- The identification of the adult education needs in the rural areas of the Banat

and Transilvania regions, adequate to the main adult segments obtained after the segmentation

- The identification of the main development directions in the adult education field in the rural areas coming from Banat and Transilvania, Romania accordingly to their specific needs in the educational field.

The research hypothesis

We present the working hypothesis which were the fundaments of these research:1. The living conditions of the rural areas inhabitants from the Banat and

Transilvania have worsen in the last 10 years (Q1)2. The main occupation of the adults coming from the rural areas is

agriculture (Q17)3. As an average, a quarter of the adult population coming from the rural

areas in Banat and Transilvania is unemployed (Q18)4. As an average, a quarter of the adult population coming from the Banat

and Transilvania regions are part of the disadvantaged category (Q19)5. The most used mass communication mean in the Banat and

Transilvania regions is television (Q20)6. The most important source of information in the rural areas are the local

doctors (Q21)7. The most important source of information in the agricultural field

consists of the traditions and customs (Q21)8. The most important domain in which adult education activities should

be performed is the one connected to agriculture (Q23)

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9. The right frequency for delivering adult education courses in the rural areas is once a month (Q27)

10.The best season to organize adult education courses in rural areas is winter (Q28)

11.There are no big differences between man and women in the rural areas regarding their interest for the adult education activities delivered for them (Q31)

12.The adults from the rural areas in The Banat and Transilvania regions cannot afford to pay for the courses (Q32)

There are aspects regarding adult education in the rural areas in the Banat and Transilvania regions for which anterior information weren’t enough in order to elaborate working hypothesis. From those we focused on the following:

- The activities should be organize in the Centers for rural adult education in the Banat and Transilvania regions (Q24)

- The necessary equipments needs in the Center for rural adult education in Banat and Transilvania (Q25)

- The types of courses needed for the adults coming from the rural areas in Banat and Transilvania (Q26)

- The main motivations for the adults coming from the rural areas in Banat and Transilvania are to participated to the educational activities (Q29)

- The main age groups are interested in educational activities (Q30)- The main institutions which should be involved in adult education activities

(Q33)- Suggestions regarding adult education in the rural areas form Banat and

Transilvania (Q34)

In order to obtain detailed data regarding these aspects we have used in the questionnaire open questions, which were analyzed afterwards using qualitative methods.

The establishment of the research and sample universe

The research universe was made out of the adult population coming from the rural areas in the following counties: Timis, Caras Severin, Arad, Hunedoara, Alba, Bistrita Nasaus, Cluj and Salaj.

The problems regarding adult education aren’t very different from commune to small villages around we have chosen as a sample unit the COMMUNE.

We considered that in order to have a segmentation of the adult population from the areas and in order to identify the educational needs the nest option is to question the main actors coming from a rural community: the mayor / vice-mayor, the priest (orthodox and / or catholic), school master, doctor / pharmacist, agriculture engineer / veterinary, policeman.

The elaborated sample was a stratified random one. This research is an exploratory one, we are more interested in identifying the real problems concerning adult education in the rural areas than obtaining some exact percentages related to each

96


investigated categories. Therefore we have established the sample at a 5% percent from the total communes in the areas, and from each commune we have questioned each main actor from the community.

The first layer was achieved at the level of the above-mentioned counties. Then, for each county we have calculated the resulted number for the 5%. After that we selected in a random manner on the calculated step for each county, the complete list for the communes, which were included in the sample.

97


Nr.

CODE / COUNTY

TOTAL COMMUNES

Nr. of communes from

the sample

The calculated

step

COMMUNITIES / CODE

1. 1- Timiş 75 4 19 Ciacova – 1Giroc – 2Pişchia – 3Uivar – 4

2. 2 - Arad 67 3 22 Ghioroc – 21Şemlac – 22Zerind – 23

3. 3 - Caraş Severin

69 3 23 Dalboşeţ – 31Păltiniş – 32Ocna de Fier – 33

4. 4 - Hunedoara

56 3 19 Certeju de Sus – 41Râu de Mori – 42Vorta – 43

5. 5 - Cluj 74 4 19 Casciu – 51Gârbău – 52Petreştii de Jos – 53Valea Ierii – 54

6. 6 - Alba 65 3 22 Galda de Jos – 61Roşia Montana – 62Vinţu de Jos – 63

7. 7 - Bistriţa Năsăud

53 3 18 Leşu – 71Rodna – 72Vinţu de Jos – 73

8. 8 - Sibiu 53 3 18 Daloş – 81Poiana Sibiului – 82Turnu Roşu – 83

Total 512 26

At the end we applied a number of 5 to 7 questionnaires to the main actors from the investigated communes:

- The mayor / vice-mayor - The priest (orthodox and / or catholic)- The school master- The doctor / pharmacist- The agriculture engineer / veterinary- The policeman.

98


We obtained a sample consisting of 157 questionnaires.

The collecting of the field data through the questionnaire

The data collecting was achieved during 17 – 23 May 2002 by a team of field operators:

99


Nr.

CODE / COUNTY

COMMUNES / CODES

Nr. questionnaires

OPERATORS / CODES

1. 1- Timiş Ciacova – 1Giroc – 2Pişchia – 3Uivar – 4

141 - 170 Komloşi Antonia - 11Solomie Gabriela - 12Fâra Horaţiu - 13

2. 2 - Arad Ghioroc – 21Şemlac – 22Zerind – 23

116 - 140 Ienaga Nicoleta - 14

3. 3 - Caraş Severin

Dalboşeţ – 31Păltiniş – 32Ocna de Fier – 33

171 - 195 Komloşi Antonia - 11Solomie Gabriela - 12Fâra Horaţiu -13

4. 4 - Hunedoara Certeju de Sus – 41Râu de Mori – 42Vorta – 43

196 - 220 Havaşi Alina - 15Cristina Câmpeanu - 16Bota Andreea - 17

5. 5 - Cluj Casciu – 51Gârbău – 52Petreştii de Jos – 53Valea Ierii – 54

1 - 30 Popa Raluca - 18

6. 6 - Alba Galda de Jos – 61Roşia Montana – 62Vinţu de Jos – 63

56 - 85 Havaşi Alina - 15Cristina Câmpeanu - 16

7. 7 - Bistriţa Năsăud

Leşu – 71Rodna – 72Vinţu de Jos – 73

86 - 115 Havaşi Alina - 15Cristina Câmpeanu - 16

8. 8 - Sibiu Daloş – 81Poiana Sibiului – 82Turnu Roşu – 83

31 - 55 Marcu Cristina - 19

Data processing and the recorded information

The data processing through the questionnaires was achieved in phases. In the first one, a database was achieved in FoxPro in which the collected data were introduced.

In the second phase, the completed database was imported in SPSS, specialized program in statistic processing. In this program the database was prepared for data processing by eliminating small errors made at introducing the data and by transforming the variables, which didn’t allow a quantitative analysis.

100


In the third phase we achieved the processing of the data in SPSS and the qualitative processing of the data obtained from the answers gives at the open questions.

In the fourth phase, the obtained results were transferred in a Word document, having this way a significant synthesis which contains of frequency analysis of the variables, some indicators useful in the results interpretation and the graphics as well.

Analyze and results interpretation

We present the main results obtained after the analysis of the collected field data

101


Q1. Which is your opinion regarding the improving or worsening of the living conditions in your commune in the last 10 years?

Improving or worsening of the living conditions

31,3%

31,3%

18,8%

18,8%The same

Worse

Better

0

Q2. In what type of geographical region do you live?

102


Q6 Which is the predominant ethnic group in your commune?

Q7. Which is the majority religion in your commune?

103


Q18. What is the proportion of adults without occupation in your commune? Statistics

Q18 Adults Without Occupations in Commune25

13222,04

ValidMissing

N

Mean

Q18 Adults Without Occupations in Commune

1 ,6 4,0 4,01 ,6 4,0 8,01 ,6 4,0 12,02 1,3 8,0 20,03 1,9 12,0 32,03 1,9 12,0 44,04 2,5 16,0 60,01 ,6 4,0 64,03 1,9 12,0 76,01 ,6 4,0 80,04 2,5 16,0 96,01 ,6 4,0 100,0

25 15,9 100,0132 84,1157 100,0

05781015202530384055Total

Valid

SystemMissingTotal

Frequency Percent Valid PercentCumulative

Percent

Q19. What is the proportion of disadvantaged adults in your commune?

Q19 Disadvantaged Adults in CommuneFrequenc

yPercent Valid

PercentCumulati

ve Percent

Valid 1 1 ,6 3,8 3,8 2 1 ,6 3,8 7,7 3 1 ,6 3,8 11,5 4 1 ,6 3,8 15,4 5 3 1,9 11,5 26,9 8 1 ,6 3,8 30,8 10 6 3,8 23,1 53,8 11 1 ,6 3,8 57,7 15 1 ,6 3,8 61,5 20 1 ,6 3,8 65,4 30 4 2,5 15,4 80,8 35 2 1,3 7,7 88,5 40 2 1,3 7,7 96,2 60 1 ,6 3,8 100,0 Total 26 16,6 100,0 Missing System 131 83,4

Total 157 100,0

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Q19 Disadvantaged Adults in Commune N Valid 26

Missing 131 Mean 18,04

Q20. Please indicate which is the most common way of communication used by adults in your commune?

Q21. Which is the main information source regarding health issues?

105


Information source regarding health issues

,6%

1,9%

8,9%

17,8%

,6%

70,1%

Other

Educational brochure

Television

Medical center

Radio

Doctors

106


Q22. Which is the main information source regarding agriculture activities?

Information sourse regarding agriculture issues

5,7%

33,1%

12,7%

26,1%

2,5%

2,5%

17,2%

Other

Customs/traditions

Town hall

Agronomist

Written press

Radio

Television

Q23. Which do you believe should be the main topics regarding adult education in rural areas?

Main topics regarding adult education 1 preference

Q23_pref1 Main Topics for AE in Rural Areas

Psychological counse

Marketing/management

Individual/colective

Communication/media

Legislation

Cultural activities

Assurance

Environment protecti

Information technolo

Transportation

Tourism

Economics

Politics

Public administratio

Social assistance

Alfabetisation

Medicine/health

Zootechny

Agriculture

Per

cent

60

50

40

30

20

10

0 6

117

50

107


Q27. How often should these courses be held?

Frecquency for courses for adults in rural area

1,9%

1,9%

11,5%

10,8%

33,8%

40,1%

Every day

Twice or three times

Once a week

Twice or three times

Once a month

Several times a year

Q28. When do you consider these courses should be held?

Best season for courses for adults in rural area

12,7%

82,2%

1,9%

3,2%

No matter the season

Winter

Summer

Spring

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Q31. Which adult category would be more interested in education activities?

Q32. Could adults from rural areas pay for the courses?

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Q17. Which are the main occupations in your commune?

Nr. Occupation TotalScore

1. Agriculture 1302. Industry 1153. Zoo technical 884. Trade 225. Services 166. Public Administration 57. Without Occupation 38. Education 3

382

No response / Don’t know

Total

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Q24. What activities do you consider should be undertaken in a Rural Center for Adult Education?

Nr. Activities Total%

1. Instruction / Lectures 9231%

2. Cultural activities for spending the free time 4615%

3. Resolving current and future problems of the community

4615%

4. Information activities 3512%

5. Conferences, debate, meeting with personalities 2910%

6. Activities for promoting tourism 165%

7. Social work and medicine 145%

8. Activities for professional recon version 124%

9. Ecological activities 72%

10. Specifically activities for the Roma people 31%300

100%

No response / Don’t know 171Total 471

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Q25. What equipment should be necessary for a Rural Center for Adult Education?

Nr. Facilities Total%

1. Computers connected to Internet 8426%

2. Libraries 6621%

3. Electronically equipment 5919%

4. Room for activities 3611%

5. Specialized instructors 258%

6. Other response 144%

7. Modern mass-media means 113%

8. Furniture 113%

9. Equipment for sportive activities 41%

10. Radio and TV station 31%

11. Telephonic center 21%

12. Finance for sustaining the Center 21%

13. Theater groups 11%318

100%


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Q26. What type of courses do you consider as necessary for adults coming

from rural areas?

Nr. Type of courses Total%

1. About agriculture issues 6118%

2. Tourism, agro-tourism, environment protection

5215%

3. Education: moral, civic, religion 4814%

4. Medicine and social work 4413%

5. Computers 3811%

6. Zoo technical 3711%

7. Practically oriented 216%

8. Management and marketing 195%

9. Legislation 165%

10. Foreign languages 82%344

100%


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Q29. Which do you consider should be the main motivations to get the adults from the rural areas to participate at education activities?

Nr. Motivation Total%

1. For development and self development 56 - 23%2. Practically oriented activities 42 - 18%3. Possibilities for improving the living conditions 41 - 17%4. Possibilities for improving the agriculture productivity 32 - 13%5. For obtaining new information 22 - 9%6. For recreation and meetings 12 - 5%7. Accessibility of the information and professionalism of the

lectors8 - 3%

8. Useful for improving the health 6 - 3%9. Useful for child education 5 - 2%10. Curiosity 4 - 2%11. Intensive and short courses 4 - 2%12. A good previous promotion of the activities 4 - 2%13. Knowing and keeping the customs 3 - 1%

239 - 100%No response / Don’t know 232

Total 471

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Q30. Which do you think are the main adult age groups interested in education activities?

Nr. Age category Total%

1. 20-30 years 11139%

2. 30-40 years 8429%

3. 18-20 years 4114%

4. 40-50 years 4014%

5. 50-60 years 114%

6. 60-70 years 10%

Total 288

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Q33. Which institutions from the rural areas do you think should be involved in adult education?

Nr. Institutions Total%

1. City Hall 14431%

2. School 12326%

3. Church 6815%

4. Medical Center 5813%

5. Police / Fire Department 327%

6. Others 214%

7. Center for Rural Assistance 163%

8. Veterinary Center 51%

9. Family 20%469

100%No response / Don’t know 473

Total 942

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Q34. Do you have any suggestions regarding the adult education in rural areas?

Nr. crt Suggestions Total%

1. Motivation the adults for participating on courses 41 - 20%

2. Applicability and effectiveness of the courses 36 - 18%

3. Effective promotion of the activities 27 - 13%

4. Proposed courses 24 - 12%

5. Implication of the institution 21 - 10%6. More urgent implementation of adult education in rural

area16 - 8%

7. Competence of the lectors 11 - 5%8. Changing the mentalities and communication 8 - 4%9. Other suggestions 6 - 3%

10. Organization cultural activities 5 - 2%

11. Organization meeting, conferences 4 - 2%

12. Organization Counseling Center 3 - 1%202 - 100%


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HUNGARY

Methodology for the identification of the target groups

The target group of the needs assessment was identified on the basis of the SAERA project principles (where we made a previous selection of the target groups based on our previous experience in the rural areas).

The most disadvantageous inhabitants in economy and infrastructure are in the small communities of East-Hungary, the ratio of the continually unemployed peoples and the mostly untrained Roma ethnics are relatively high. The target group of the project is the unemployed adult inhabitants near to the Romanian border.

Within the frame of the SAERA program a model of strategy and methods for the training of the adult inhabitants will be developed by the local telecottages.

These telecottages above solve tasks of „telecentres”; these telecottages are organizing continually trainings. It is a very typical habit, that local demands are satisfying by the present trainings. It is necessary and possible to connect the telecottages by a computer network, because such technology can guarantee the qualified and thematically unified trainings for the inhabitants of the small communities and the continuation courses for the trainers. The prepared materials - developing by the project - can be used as models for telecottages and telecentres.

We would like to introduce telecottages in small villages out of the target group – as Hajdúbagos, Szentpéterszeg, Pócspetri and Körösnagyharsány – e.g. for collecting experiences and the evaluation of the project-results. These telecottages will further-develop and analyze the results of the project.

We selected the target group those long-term unemployed people, who has participated, or willing to participate in adult education program in the four telecottages.

Selecting the needs assessment instrument:We decided to use questionnaires in the needs assessment, because with the closed questions we can collect hard data, and the open questions provides us the possibility to collect soft data parallel.

The questionnaires were conducted by the local telecottages.

The quantitative type of questionnaire covers the following topics: Hard data (i.e. age, gender, housing, income), Employment history, Educational background and needs, Motivation.

Unemployed people in the four villages filled the questionnaires. We received: 14 questionnaires from Hajdúbagos 34 questionnaires from Szentpéterszeg 15 questionnaires from Kőrösnagyharsány

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10 questionnaires from Pócspetri.

Local partnership with the local institutions

The Hungarian Telecottage Association identified as local partners four telecottages: Hajúbagos Szentpéterszeg Kőrösnagyharsány Kötegyán.

These telecottages became uninvaded institutions in the small villages. Maybe not everybody visits these institutions, but all inhabitants know that their information connected basic needs – if they wanted – they could satisfy here, and this is not less. We have to count on the influence that through the fund and operation everybody gets known these ideas. According to the examinations youth and private enterprisers live with the offered possibilities. It can hardly measured how important information were given by the usage of Internet for them, but it’s undeniable, otherwise they wouldn’t come and visit these places over and over again. On those settlements where the primary school is not connected to the “Sulinet” Program network the disadvantage of children is partly reduced by telecottages. It has an important task in the activity of non-profit organizations. Competitions and telecottage funding means a strong civil organization, but many places realised that thank to the telecottages many organizations activate themselves and also new ones form. This partly can be thanked to the equipment and competition experiences, partly to the sample-giving act of the community. Telecottages give work for some people, and also hope for the members of voluntary network to get distance work sooner or later or any other job through the telecottages. The Internet also stretched the horizont of telecottages and self-governments. People can get more information, possibilities and co-operation of making applications. It has a serious effect when the recognition will generally proven how big a good communicational and data transfer national network in a leadership of well-qualified persons can be. Some signs of that can be experienced from some parts of the administrative sector.

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POLAND

Information on unemployment in Poland

At present the situation at the labour market in Poland is very bad. The level of unemployment is almost twenty percent. For those without work it means that their chances to find one are very limited, and for those who are afraid of losing it living under a continuous stress. The crisis is aggravated by the prospects of economic recession during the years to come.

Here are some important facts on the employment in Poland with a special consideration to the rural areas.

Situation of young people (aged 19-26) according to their place of residence34

According to the report, the situation in the country is much more difficult. The experts point at the very high level of concealed unemployment in agricultural sector. The young people have little chance to find a new job in this sector of economy. As there are difficulties in commuting, small towns situated in the neighbourhood ought to be their natural labour market for seeking jobs. However the situation in those markets is very difficult either.

The access to education for that group of young people is very limited because of the costs of commuting and accommodation in a big city.

That inequality, due to the place of living, is nothing new in the Polish reality. By 1989, there were attempts to solve that problem with the help of social policy. For example, additional points for “working-class background” were given to help the young people to get access to the higher education.

34 Source: „Praca dla Młodych” – AIG Warszawa 2002

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Target group – KROSNO

The target groups have been chosen in two villages: Miejsce Piastowe and Kobylany. We have established contacts with local authorities in those villages, so there is open co-operation and consent for involving local society into the project. Schools headmasters and local administrators are involved in Tele-Centres activity.

Those two villages have different social level. This fact is related to their location; one is only 6 kilometres from Krosno and the other is located 20 km from Krosno. The society profile in those two places is quite different. Many of Miejsce Piastowe inhabitants were workers in factories in Krosno, now they are out of work. In Kobylany a smaller number of inhabitants were factory workers before. Most of the people from Kobylany are working at their small farms, but considering the situation in the Polish agriculture they can be treated as future unemployed. Their farms are small (up to 3 ha) and some of them are situated in mountain areas. This kind of farms doesn’t allow the farmers to support their families. Another factor that influences their present situation is the fact that they used to be employed also in industry, mainly in Krosno. Now after political and economic changes in Poland, many of former “farmers-workers” were dismissed from factories. The unemployment rate in Krosno region is 18,1% now and it isn’t decreasing.

We have established contacts with local authorities in those villages, so there is open co-operation and consent for involving local society into the project. Schools headmasters and local administrators are involved in TeleCenters activity. Our local partners confirmed necessity of increase propositions for target group people in chosen villages.

Into local partners were include also our post-secondary students who are living in Kobylany and Miejsce Piastowe

Comparing data of the questioned people

The target groups are situated in two different villages, so below the comparison of some detailed data has been shown, both of the employed and the unemployed.

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Education of adults Here we can see clearly difference in education of the adults. More people from Miejsce Piastowe have higher education than those from Kobylany (secondary, university).

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Adult courses

The comparable quantity in both villages has attended courses for adults.

Foreign language

Here is an example of a misunderstanding. In comparison with “no” answers there are too many “yes” answers. In fact, many people in Poland consider that they know a foreign language only because they did it as a subject at school. But it doesn’t mean that they really know the language. Also many of them did Russian, which is not as useful as western languages. Besides, some of the people from the south of Poland understand (but don’t speak) Slovakian (Polish and Slovakian languages are similar).

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Computer skills

After comparing the weighed average, we assess that the skills of the Kobylany inhabitants are higher (21.75) then those of Miejsce Piastowe people (15.00).

Computer at home.

These data are comparable to the previous ones; the amount of computer owners is almost the same as the amount of the people who possess computer skills.

Internet.

The question is related to the previous one so answers are very similar.

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Taking part in courses.

There are three most popular answers in both villages: computer, language and the Internet courses. Also some special interests, like dancing or fishing, have been shown.

Why take part in the course?

The most popular reasons are: developing skills and knowledge.

Payment for the course.

The majority of the people who have been surveyed demonstrated their will to participate in free or extremely cheap courses.

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Data analysis of the target groups (the unemployed)

Education of adults.

The weighed average in Kobylany (2.43) is lower to the one in Miejsce Piastowe (2.71). Kobylany is a village, which is situated further from Krosno, so it could be a reason for lower level of education.

Courses for adults.

The higher index for Kobylany means that its inhabitants continued improving their qualifications after finishing their daily school education.

Foreign language.

Miejsce Piastowe has the advantage over Kobylany, however we have to make allowances for the index (see remark for foreign language /all inhabitants/ above).

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Computer skills

The weighed average for Kobylany is higher (2.29, Miejsce Piastowe – 1.7), it could be a result of higher index of adult courses participants in Kobylany.

Computer at home.

The proportion for Kobylany is 0.41, for Miejsce Piastowe is 0.25, which means that the index of computer skills in Kobylany is higher.

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The Internet.

The result is related to the previous point; here Kobylany is also higher (0.29) than Miejsce Piastowe (0.20).

Taking part in courses.

The proportion for Miejsce Piastowe (2.00) is much more favourable than the one of Kobylany (1.05). It could be influenced by the shorter distance to Krosno or by the fact that the economic status of the Kobylany inhabitants is much lower.

Choice of courses.

The most popular courses are computer courses, next language and those related to economics (accountancy and marketing).

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Why take part in the course?

Here there is a big difference comparing to the employed people answers. The unemployed want to get a new job and it is the first and direct reason for their participation in a course. Developing skills is also important but knowledge is on the last place. It means that the unemployed think very realistically.

Payment for the course.

Most of the unemployed inhabitants of both villages are able to pay up to 50 PLN (15 EUR) per month. It is only (or as much as?) 7.7% of current monthly unemployment benefit in Poland.

Financial situation.

The question was only “What is your family financial situation?” The questionnaire did not include any question concerning their exact income and in their subjective opinion their status is not high. They answered: low or

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medium. However, we have to take into consideration that most of them are married or live with the family, so they are not quite without means.

Methodology for the identification of the target groups - Bytom

At present in the Silesia Voivodship we are noticing a constant growth of unemployment. It is due to the undergoing reconstruction of the regional industry and worsening of economical situation in Poland in general.

Basic target group the offer of the Telecenters in the Silesia Voivodship will be addressed to are the workers of the companies and firms that are being shut down (mining, metallurgical building industry). In the past there were strong connections between the rural areas and industrial agglomerations. Many peoples that lived in the country commuted to the cities every day as the distance between their homes and their place of work was not long. Some of them still were running their farms; others gave it up for good. There emerged a new social group called “farm-factory workers”. At present, after losing their jobs, they cannot find a new one neither in a city nor in the country they come from. The problem is that considerable part of the younger generation of the farm-factory workers is tied with the country only by their address. They are not capable to run a farm and have lost their creativeness.

Establishing the target and focus group was done in two stages.

The first stage – we worked out general characteristic of Silesian Voivodship society – paying a special attention to the rural areas (the northern and southern part of the Voivodship)

As there are no means in the Project budget (CKU budget) to carry out proper sociological and statistical researches, we made use of the yearbooks, the sociological and sociotechnical researches carried out by Regional Labour Office in Katowice, and the data received from various state and local authorities.

The second stage – we finally chose the target group: all the unemployed in a village community, persons returning to their village that had migrated earlier to the city, and the young village people entering the labour market with no chance to find a job. The focus group will consist of the so-called “farm-factory workers”.

Analysis of the data

Question 1. SexFemale - 53%Male - 47%

Question 2. Age18 – 25 - 29%26 – 35 - 20%36 – 45 - 40%

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46 – 55 - 11%

The main group is people 36 – 45 years old; we must take to consideration needs of this part of society.

Question 3. Education levelElementary - 4%Vocational - 28%Secondary - 53%Higher - 15%

Because the main part of people who fill up questionnaire are after secondary school – the main aims of education are needs concern to vocational, higher, hobbies or another subject.

Question 4. Marital statues

Siongle - 36%Married - 64%

The reasons of decisions to take a part in education by Telecentrum are care about family.

Question 5. Number of people in common household

One - 4%Two - 9%Three - 18%Four - 42%Five - 18%More - 9%

There are domination a typical structure of family in whole Poland = 2 parents + 2 children.

Question 6. Housing conditions

Own house or flat - 58%Rented flat - 7%With parents or further family - 35%

Question 7. Social background group

Rural worker - 10%Factory worker - 80%White-collar -10%

80% of population hasn’t got a tradition to live in the village. They want choose model of live people in the town.

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Question 9. Source of income

Employment - 52%Farming - 2%Pension/disability pension - 6%Unemployment benefit - 2 %Depend on parents - 23%Depend on husband or wife - 11%Odd job - 4%

The biggest parts of this people see their future in leaving village and work in town.

Question 10. Family incomes

Very low - 6%Low - 29%Average - 65%High - 0%

People who live in Silesia villages, havent got typical situation in Poland. They have average income, beacouse they have income from Silesian industry.

Question 11. Job mobility (number of work places during the whole career)

One - 64%Two - 18%Three - 12%Four - 6%More - 0%

Needs assessment study – Local partnership with the local institutions

Our partners in the Project: Regional Labour Office in Katowice The leaders of the chosen local communities

We carried our researches to choose appropriate local communities. Thanks to our contacts with Regional Labour Office in Katowice we were able to obtain the materials concerning social structure and labour market in the rural areas of Silesia.

Having analysed all the obtainable data we chose several villages. We did not take into consideration the ones with low percentage of farm workers, as well as those situated too close to big cities as they serve as “bedrooms” for the commuters. We assumed the following criteria:

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Long distance from big industrial centres (over 10 km) Quite big percentage of people living by farming

We also took into consideration the willingness of a given community to cooperate with local leaders. Local authorities were not able to help us in our project as they did not enjoyed good opinion. People do not want to cooperate with them, as they are regarded as incompetent, and the state and local enterprises as inefficient ones. Because of that we had to look for other persons who really enjoy confidence of the community they are living in. Finally we decided to cooperate with two local priests, Catholic and Evangelical ones (there are a large number of protestants in Silesia), and with the centres and parishes administered by them. In Poland priests are generally thought to be main leaders of local communities – especially in the village communities: small and conservative. They are engaged in many different activities for the common good, so we think that establishing Telecenters in such villages will bring positive effects. It will make their inhabitants more active, and will enable them further education according to the spirit of Grundtvig`s ideas. Apart from that, it will improve the position of women and disabled persons who play secondary role in village communities.

Two local communities were chosen as the objects of our further research.

We chose the communities of Rudy and Dobromyśl, as they have all the features of a target group (unemployment), and a focus group (they live in the rural areas of Silesia, farm-factory workers formerly employed in coal mines and in metallurgical sector, transport).

The village of Rudy is situated near the towns of Gliwice and Racibórz - two big cities. Its inhabitants run farms and are industrial or trade workers in Gliwice and Racibórz. Its population is about 2700. Considerable amount of young people leaves their homes and looks for a job in the West European countries.

The village of Dobromyśl is situated in the neighbourhood of Jastrzębie Zdrój – a large industrial city, with coalmines mainly. There are about 2000 inhabitants in Dobromyśl.

The Form and Educational Center in Rudy run by the Gliwice Diocese will be the local partner of CKU. The Center works within the local parish in Rudy and is administered by the priest Jan Rosiek. During our visit and talks with him on 18th March we stated the terms of our future cooperation and what we expect from it. The priest Rosiek declared his full support for the ideas included in the SAERA Project.

In Dobromyśl, the Evangelic-Augsburg Parish administered by the vicar Karol Macura will be the local partner of CKU. During our visit on 19th March we talked with the vicar Macura about the prospects of the SAERA Project and established general terms of our future cooperation. The vicar Macura took a keen interest in the project carried by CKU in Bytom and declared his willingness to participate in it.

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After the talks with both of the leaders we came to an agreement as to the terms of our cooperation. Our main aim is to work for the good of both the local communities, to activate their members, to improve their living conditions, and to change the way of life of the people of Rudy and Drogomyśl.

In the both cases the help offered by the priests is gratuitous.

Applied methodology and tools

We have identified the needs of the two chosen village communities by carrying out the research among:

a) The leading groups of the local communities (clergymen, village mayor and administrator, school head-master, teachers, doctors)

b) The whole population of the chosen village/districtInterviewing was the basic tool applied in the group of the leaders, whereas questionnaires among the inhabitants. The questionnaire for the village inhabitants includes questions that will help to obtain the following information concerning:

- The structure of education- Level of general knowledge, including ability to read and write- How they estimate their own chances (individual and in general) to find

their own place in the new reality- Knowledge of computer technique and of modern means of

communication and possibility to apply them in the process of education.

- The demand (individual and in general) for courses and trainings- Their willingness to attend courses and trainings that are organized in

their village/district- Former experiences connected with attending courses and trainings

The form consists of 11 questions concerning personal data, and 11 questions in regard to their needs and expectations.

The questionnaires were printed and sent to Rudy on 22nd March, and to Dobromyśl on 26th March. On 28th March the leaders notified us that they received the questionnaires and that they handed them over to the members of local communities. By 20th April we received back 39 questionnaires from Rudy and 15 from Dobromyśl.

Our activities to promote the idea of Telecenters

In March we came in touch with Mrs Hanna Batorowska from Pedagogical Academy in Kraków. Mrs Batorowska is one of the organizers of the country conference Education for the Future in a School Computerized Resource Center, which will be held this year on 24-25 May. During the conference we will deliver a lecture The Idea of Telecenters in Adults Education in Rural Areas.

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SPAINLocal Partnerships

In order to make questionnaires to determine as they are the necessities of the adult people in the rural areas in Aragón, FASE made contact with four rural nuclei (Ejea de los Caballeros, Luceni, El Grado, Zuera), to which the questionnaires were facilitated to them, and in which these questionnaires have been done by representatives of the most representative groups of the community: medical staff, personnel of the City council, agriculturists, cattle dealers, teachers, housewives, etc.............

4.1.1 EJEA DE LOS CABALLEROS

It covers a surface with 609.9 Km2.It is 72 km far from Zaragoza.It is located to an altitude of 346 ms.It belongs to the region of CINCO VILLAS

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4.1.2 EL GRADO

It covers a surface with 63.8 Km2.It is 69 km far from Huesca.It is located to an altitude of 467 ms.It belongs to the region SOMONTANO DE BARBASTRO.

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4.1.3 LUCENI

It covers a surface with 27.1 Km2.It is 38 km far from Zaragoza.It is located to an altitude of 234 ms.It belongs to the region of RIBERA ALTA DEL EBRO.

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4.1.4 ZUERA

It covers a surface with 419 Km2.It is 25 km far from Zaragoza.It is located to an altitude of 279 ms.It belongs to the region of ZARAGOZA.

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Analysis of the questionnaires

The questionnaires were filled out by 25 representatives, divided in the following way:

Ejea de los Caballeros—7El Grado—7Zuera—4Luceni—7

After having made an exhaustive study of all of them, we can come to the following conclusions, step by step:

1.- All the polled people think that in the last 10 years there has been an improvement in the conditions of life in their community.

2.- The type of geographic zone in which the polled people live is divided into:14 -- Mountain range; 11 -- Depression

3.- The average of families from the four communities is: 1310 families.

4.- The average of people from the four communities is: 5.858 people.

5.- The average age of the people who live in the four communities is: 49 years

6.- Among the predominant ethnic groups (after the Spanish one) they vary among the following ones: Gypsy, European, African and Arab

7.- The four communities has restaurant.

8.- Three of these communities have Police Station.

9.- Two of them have a Centre of Cultural Patrimony.

10,11,12,13.- All of them have any Historical Monument, Tourist attraction, Library and Cultural Centre.

14.- Among the main occupations in these communities they appear the following ones and in the following order:

AgricultureCattle raisingCommerceIndustry

15.- The television is the way more commonly used by the adults to receive some information.

16.- The Medical Centre of Health is the main source of information with respect to the subjects of health in the four communities.

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17.- As far as the agricultural activities, the sources of information vary between the Written Press and the Cooperatives in a 50% each one of them.

18.- With respect to the adult education in rural areas, there is a total unanimity as far as the main subjects in the following order of importance:

AgricultureTechnological InformationHealth mattersEnvironmental protectionCultural activities

19.- About the activities that would have to be carried out in a Rural Centre for Adult Education, they vary among:

Professional improvementKnowledge of new techniquesMedicine and health

20.- The equipment that the polled people think that it is necessary for the Centres of Adult Education is the computer equipment and the human resources to give the classes.

21.- The courses they consider necessary for the adult people in rural areas are the following ones:

Permanent trainingManual laboursComputer scienceProfessional recycling

22,23.- Most of the people they have thought that the frequency with which these courses would have to be taken would be once a month and that the season doesn’t matter.

24.- The main motivations to arrive at the adult people so that they participate in the educative activities would be the following ones in importance order:

Quality of life.Courses for different ages and corporationsPractical contents for their works

25.- The average of age for the main groups of people interested in cultural activities would be: 25-40 years

26.- Two of the polled communities believe that adults' category most interested in educational activities are women, whereas for other two communities do not exist any difference.

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27.- As for the Institutions of the rural areas that should be involved, most of the polled persons think that these ones should be the following ones in order of priority:

City HallCounty CouncilEducative Centres

28.- There have not been many suggestions about the adult education in rural areas. The most significant ones have been as follows:

Better informationCompatible schedulesTo improve the quality of life in the rural areas

29,30,31,32,33.- The personal particulars relating to people who nicely wanted to answer to these questionnaires are the following ones:

SEX---15 men; 10 womenAVERAGE AGE---35 yearsNATIONALITY---SpanishMARITAL STATUS--- 10 single people 15 married peopleSCHOOLING, EDUCATION-— 5 holders of an Universitary degree 8 holders of a diploma 6 holders of a secondary school degree 6 holders of a primary school degree

34.- The job / employment that polled people have is very varied:

TWO VETERINARY SURGEON

FOUR TEACHERS

THREE BUSINESSMEN

ONE ENGINEER

ONE EXPERT AGRONOMIST

ONE JOURNALIST

TWO SHOPKEEPERS

ONE PRIEST

ONE HEADMASTER

ONE DOCTOR

TWO FARMERS

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ONE PENSIONER

ONE STUDENT

ONE HOUSEWIFE

ONE BANK MANAGER

TWO SOCIAL WORWERS

35.- With regard to the religion, we must say that, except two persons who answered with “no religious affiliation”, most people have agreed in their Catholic beliefs.

Analysis and Assessment of the Hierarchy of Needs

To evaluate the questionnaire for the hierarchy of needs, we asked people to express their opinions, valuing them from 1 to 5, obtaining maximum valuation (5), the most important need for them.

Here you have the total amount for every step:

1.- Regarding the ACTIVITIES RELATED TO THE TRAINING AND THE INFORMATIVE SEMINARS

1.- 762.- 763.- 1054.- 565.- 586.- 747.- 858.- 799.- 7610.- 4211.- 8012.- 10113.- 83

We can come to the conclusion that people think that, as much the topics related to the tourism, rural tourism, environmental protection and the computer science have more relevancy for their needs, whereas it is necessary to emphasize the low punctuation that they assign to the Legislation and Public Administrations.

2.- Regarding the CULTURAL-SPORT ACTIVITIES 14.- 8015.- 6716.- 7217.- 6118.- 64

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19.- 52Observing this information, we realize that the cultural- sport needs have, more or less, the same importance, being the popular events the need that more punctuation has had on the rest of the others.

3.- Regarding the MATTERS OF THE COMMUNITY 20.- 7321.- 7622.- 74

We can observe that people give nearly the same importance to the three of these activities.

4.- Regarding to INFORMATIVE ACTIVITIES 23.- 4824.- 8125.- 7726.- 89

In this valuation of needs in informative activities, we can observe that there is a clear contrast between the most voted one (Conferences, seminars ...) and least voted one (banners).

5.- Regarding to TOURIST PROMOTIONS 27.- 9028.- 7529.- 7330.- 7231.- 8332.- 9733.- 71

There is no a notable difference among all of them, being the needs relative to the Environmental Matters those that seem to have more relevancy for people.

Final conclusions and work made by FASE and its partners

Within the frame of the SAERA program to outline the model of strategy and methods for the adult education in rural areas in Aragon, FASE made, in a first approaching the proposed questionnaire to know which are the main needs that people in rural areas have nowadays, trying to compile this information within the most representative groups of the communities in which we have made questionnaires.

In Aragon the depopulation trend threatens the via liability of rural communities as the population density in Spain is very low. The primary sector underpins the existence of many rural communities, so it is necessary to secure a high level of activity in agriculture. In addition new jobs will have to be created in order to substitute those that are being lost in the primary sector.

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Allocations for rural development are growing every year, through establishment grants, financial support for young farmers and campaigns to enable girls to take over farms, but still more needs to be done.

Also we have created a new network so that adult people in rural areas can take advantage of all the facilities and educational resources: TELEDUCA NET.

Associations and organizations

Adult education involves programs, which can improve three skills, knowledge, or sensitivity of participants after the completion of formal schooling. Public and private educational institutions and religious and professional groups frequently sponsor adult education, which can include elementary, secondary. And higher education programs as well as non-degree continuing education. Frequently media is used to increase program accessibility through distance education, evening and weekend seminars, and home conferences. Many adults are pursuing education provided by business and industry, continuing their professional and workplace education. This last case is which FASE personally has been totally involved in, giving courses and continuing training to workers who really demand the educational and the training they went to have for a future implementation.

MAIN AIM

The main aim or objective is to create a stable and open network of agents and tele-centers in the rural scope, which can display a wide supply of education and training with a whole guarantee.

ORGANITATION CHARTManagement: Cosme Arrabal- E.F.A.sFulfilment: FASEnetPeople in charge-Zone entertainers: Managers or teachers of EFAs Local collaborator agents. Councilmen and other people in charge of adult education. Educators, tutors of adults in the zone.

INFRASTRUCTURE1.Tele-centers will be situated: Own facilities Municipal facilities Concerted facilities.2. Central office in FASE facilities.3. Portal of Internet of spreading, information and meeting.4. Intranet for members of the network.

DESIRABLE FACILITIESClassrooms of actual formation.Offices of tutors.

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Multimedia classrooms. Equipped with 8 to 15 computers with connection to Internet.

A tutor of classroom will administer the classroom so that each student can follow in it or in his / her private residence his / her personal plan of study.

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FRANCE

Jacques Saydraouten and Jean-Pierre Geoffroy are responsible for the SAERA program, after the departure of Bernadette Gautier and they have made the following activities inside the project:

- The choice of the targets focused on the groups..- The choice of partners with whom we have to work.- Statistics about the carrying out of the setting up of the distant training- The setting up of FOAD (distant training) by the FORE35 and Formida36

Programmes.

Our group has chosen to work on rural populations searching for employment in the Lot-et-Garonne, (Aquitaine region).

Our Training Centre has for main target to satisfy the trainees of the agricultural branch, and in the food processing industry.

Our region is mostly a rural one, with an only main town of more than forty thousand inhabitants (Agen).

We are confronted to a particular problem, resulting from an important rate of successive arrival of immigrants:

The population of the Department (Region) is composed of 305 400 inhabitants.

1930 – 1946: by the Italian people 1939 – 1970: by the spanish people1954 by the vietnamese people (20 000)1962 by the Algerian people

The chosen partners for the project are the following:

- The CFPPA (Centre of continuing education for adults in agriculture) of Ste- Livrade

- The CFPPA of Nerac- The Town Council of Ste-Livrade- The Agricultural and Social Mutualist - The Departement of Employment in Agen- The Direction of the Agricultural Departement- The Local Agency for Employment in Aiguillon

Preliminary Estimation for the Educational needs

35 FORE : Experimental Distant Programme for the Tesching of General Cultures.36 FORMIDA : Distant Learning Programme for Agriculture.

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We have had our own leaflets, due to communication in between our both CFPPA; and we have been making use of the data given to us by the Employment Agency of our region, particulary the one from Aiguillon, which is specialized in Agriculture.

Here are the following conclusions:

- Women represent 35%, out of a sample of 240 individuals questioned. - 34% - request the agricultural capacity, of which 19,5% of the total;

that is to say, 54% of the women.- 16,7% - promotion on the Labour Market, on a total of 10%, and on

which 29%, represent women- 47%% - acquiring rapid competence- 2% only - computer and communication

But, every one of them learns to make use of the computer material.

Preliminary Estimation for the Educational needs.

We make it a point to guide the trainees across a training program, and participate in a telecentre program for our users.

Our Training program is destined to young people working in agriculture, and who expect obtaining some financial assistance from the State, and from the EEC.

The target of the benefiting public:

- Young people of less than 26 years, and without educational backgrounds.

- Women (whose levels are very low, and / or who live quite alone).- Employment seekers, especially those who fight to avoid social

exclusion.- Salary men, and women of low level, working in small enterprises.- Apprentices.- Handicapped persons trained in ordinary social environment.- Non-salary workers (head of tiny small businesses, farmers with their

respective wives or partners).- Prisoners benefiting from special conditions- Immigrants.

General Targets:

- Equal chances and opportunities for Training access for everyone- Spreading cultural aspects, with access to information in society- Research of a political synergy for training courses- Reinforcement of institutional partnerships- Most of the trainees have been taking a keen interest in following the

courses, with the aim at improving their knowledge, in view of their

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future career, and to have access to the financial grants that the rural world is likely to expect

A majority, of about nearly half of the trainees, would like to study their courses at home, particularly (women with children), part time workers, producers of animal products namely: milk, meat etc., so as to be able to have more time at their disposal to study, while carrying on with their everyday duties.

Operational Targets:

The setting up of a project, based on a SAERA action, defined on a Grundtvig program, and having for target a mutual offer for FOAD, on both sites of our CFPPA.

Just like the way the action plan has been prepared, editing definite specifications with selected answers, may give way to a consult of partners involved into this program.

That consultation should exclusively be reserved to people financing the training, and by the two main parties, namely: ANPE (Employment department), and the local missions, under a State stimulating person.

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DENMARK

In order to obtain the most representative result of the need assessment analysis, SOFI Foundation has chosen to contact a wide group of representatives from all parties working with adult education and attending adult education, and hence we have contacted politicians, local administrators, ethnic groups, disadvantaged groups, teachers from language schools, VUC (Adult education centres), agricultural schools, non government centres, university research groups, social workers, administrative counsellors, and finally directors from the economic life. They have each and everyone filled out the qualitative questionnaire and voluntarily filled out the hierarchy of the needs, as they see it. Naturally they have all participated anonymously, giving the result the most reliable outcome.

The following analysis of the need assessments is consequently a result of the questionnaires, the focus group has answered in March and November 2002. Two of partakers in the survey group are now local partners (Kolding Sprogskole & Conlan ApS).

The members of the survey group are chosen from above mentioned reasons, but some has been chosen due to a former co-operation with SOFI Foundation: Kongensgaard Landbrugsskole, Integrations Centret in Aalborg and Conlan ApS.

Analysis of the questionnaires.37

The aim of the questionnaires was to get the involved partners in adult education to stake their opinions about what needs has to be fulfilled in order to achieve a better, more successful long time learning of participants with a low or none education. The questionnaire focused on 14 topics, each having a number of sub-questions attached.

25 representatives filled out the questionnaire from all partakers in the adult education system: the teachers, users, analyzers and politician. And the striking point is that they all agree that the currents adult education system has failed to meet the demands of the group in question, and that it is not a matter of physical frames or more funding, actually, it is about meeting the individual needs of each participant – if possible. It is about finding the motivation in each participant, the inner strength, and a matter of holding out a carrot to them. Even the politicians representing the 5 biggest parties in the Danish Parliament agree on this matter.

The questionnaire step by step

The topics were as follows:1. Personal data?2. Which of these conditions do you consider to be the most important in

order to get low educated people to participate in adult education?37 Please see appendix 3 for further information on the qualitative questionnaire.

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3. What should the purpose of adult education be?4. Which subject / line do you think ought to have more focus in the adult

education system?5. Which social or geographical group in society do you think society first

and foremost should use its resources on? 6. How does one counteract the tendency in adult classes that more than

40 percent drop out of the classes?7. How do you make the adult education more attractive?8. What “physical frames” do you consider to be necessary in order to

optimize adult education?9. How would you define the concept of “motivation”?10.Who has the responsibility when it comes to train those 990.000

people, aged 20-60 years, today having only grammar school as educational level?

11.Do you think that the current adult educational system is good?12. Is it your valuation that the adult teachers, currently teaching, are

qualified for their jobs?13.How do you valuate the Danish government’s on this specific subject?14.Which political “subjects” do you consider to be the most important in

the years to come?

Ad 2. The majority agreed that the most vital is to hold out a carrot to the students and to create inspiring classes.Ad 3. The majority agreed that the purpose of adult education should be to enhance the possibilities for the participants to get a job, or a higher valued job; and to improve the participant’s knowledge on society and democracy. Ad 4. The vast majority considered that the lines of Danish language and culture combined with society studies should be vital in adult classes at this level. Ad 5. The partakers in the survey all agreed upon the strong need for the adult educational system to focus on immigrants, long-time unskilled unemployed and functional illiterates. Ad 6. In order to prevent adult school dropouts, the majority of the asked, find that you have to make the classes better, more individual, more motivating, rather than just punishing the dropouts by cutting their supplementary benefit. Three of the asked suggested that you should make a “social contract” with the participants, thereby giving them both responsibility and trust. Ad 7. The majority considered that it is vital that the participant understand the purpose of the course, as well as it is vital that the classes focus on usability and ready-to-use skills. The classes should rely more on the needs of the participants than on the “wants” of the system.Ad 8. The need is for a better educational and pedagogical strategy, not better physical frames or more computers, almost everyone agreed.Ad 9. There were different opinions on the matter of defining motivation, but a dominating factor in the definitions centres on two issues: 1) motivation is about giving the participant a responsibility he has live up to, meanwhile you should encourage him, make him feel good, feel needed. 2) motivation comes the moment the participant realizes the purpose of the course, the moment he can visualize the carrot, the course holds out to him.

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Ad 10. The responsibility lies in the arms of society, the vast majority argues, because a big number of this group already feels isolated and excluded from society. A great number of the partakers int the survey also agrees, that the responsibility also lies in the hands of each participant himself.Ad 11. Actually the vast majority accepts that the adult education system today is well functioning, just not in the field of immigrant education and low skilled training. On this field everybody, except two of the politicians involved in this survey, suggest that you have to rethink the matter, and to try something new. Ad 12. All agree that the teachers and trainers currently teaching are qualified, but also admit that in some areas as immigrant education some teachers may resolve to using the wrong approach, the same procedure as last year, and the year before. Also the teachers ought to rethink their pedagogical approach.Ad 13. In general the asked, consider the effort of the new government to be lacking some important issues, nothing has changed that really matters, and nothing will until you start thinking in new ways and measurements. Four of the asked agrees that the government has done all it can do, and much more than the former, they say.Ad 14. This matter divides the participants in the survey a lot, though they all think that the most vital issues of today and tomorrow is adult education of immigrants, education as a whole and getting better and cheaper housing. Only one of the asked found that the most important issue is to stop the number of people immigrating here.

Conclusion on ”Ruralness” and need assessment agenda

This report has shown that when defining rural areas in Denmark, and problems concerning adult education (level) in that area, one has to expand the definition from a rigid geographical to a socio economical definition, because the problems in Denmark are socio-economical and NOT geographical. Due to the littleness of the country, the shortness in distances between towns and remote areas, and the fact that many well-educated people have to chosen to live in rural areas, but still work in towns etc, the traditional definition of rural areas makes no real sense in Denmark. Actually the greatest socio-economical problems, also when talking about educational level, low income, low status jobs, are centered in suburban and urban areas. Hence the issue interesting for this specific report, and the SAERA project, is how to enhance the educational level for the wide group of low educated people in Denmark today feeling excluded and marginalized, including the big group of immigrants today being out of job, low educated and due to their culture, colour of skin and religion etc. they are running uphill.

The task for SAERA hence should be to develop and test a strategy and pedagogy that take these relations and conditions into consideration. As the questionnaire quite boldly suggests, all the partakers in the debate and in the specific adult education, including politicians, teachers, ethnic groups, social workers, independent analyzers etc, that the adult education system today in many ways has failed to live up to the needs of the huge group of low educated people in Denmark. Especially concerning immigrant education. The

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questionnaire also points out the willingness from all parties to rethink the area, the issue, the willingness to try something new. And finally the questionnaire shows that the parties involved agree that a future adult education strategy has to focus on how to motivate this marginalized group to 1) enter the school system 2) remain at the course till the end. The motivation factor has to be the key word in a future strategy. At least in Denmark. All the physical frames are fine, it is no a question of “hard ware” but what you put into the courses.

The task is to find a strategy that aims to attract the vast group of low educated people in Denmark to enter the adult education system. Local partnerships

As a result of the questionaires and the formal talks throughout the year 2002 between SOFI Foundation and the parties involved, SOFI early in march 2002 established local partnerships with Kolding Sprogskole (Language School of Kolding) and the Danish company, Conlan ApS, in order to investigate a specific pedagogy that would be tested on immigrants, but could be used on other disadvantaged groups as well. In November 2002 SOFI Foundation also has made a local partnership with Zonning Multimedia in Aarhus. Zooning Multimedia is a fast growing Danish company that specializes in E-learning, combining learning traditions with the technical possibilities of the internet, and also introducing the tradition of role play / computer games with the pedagogical traditions of (life long) learning.

We chose to co-operate with Kolding Sprogskole due to a couple of reasons: 1) A team of the teachers on the school has already themselves begun to investigate new ways of teaching, rethinking the structure as well a the day-to-day confrontation with the participants of one of classes. A strategy that in many ways is similar to SOFI Foundation’s hypothesis and the outcome of the questionnaire. As Appendix III will show, the focus in the socalled “Kolding Model” is on the motivating factor, is on how to enhance the usability of the content in the language classes, and even more important how to hold out a carrot to the immigrants: job training. Considering that the questionnaires filled out by representatives from the ethnic groups in Denmark ALL showed that getting a job is the vital issue for the immigrants themselves, SOFI found that a close co-operation with Kolding Sprogskole, and their teachers, Torben Busk and Susanne Ørbæk, MA, was essential for this project. This gave us a chance to actually testing our hypothesis on a specific group of immigrants. 3) And finally, when it comes to immigrants, Kolding, as a municipality, has exactly the average percentage of immigrants in Denmark: 7 %.

Hence the “new strategy” has been tested since march 2002 on participants from Former-Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Poland, Iraq and Somalia giving quite some astonishing good result by combining classes with a high level of ready-to-useness with job training as a direct carrot to hold out to the group. But also making the group of teachers rethinking their own ways of conduct as teachers, and their own view upon their role as teachers. The test will go on

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until at least summer of 2003, and not until then will we be able to get a satisfying picture of the result. The test has received a bold attention from both politicians and analysers from all over the country, making it possible for one of teachers, Mr. Torben Busk, to actually get time to make a book about the ideas behind “The Kolding Model”.

Conlan ApS is a medium-sized Danish company developing and producing alarm systems and other electronic devices for security with sales in Denmark, Sweden, Germany etc. For many years it has had a close co-operation with the local authorities in the town of Aalborg about integration by enlisting every year immigrants to job training on the facilities in Aalborg. Hence they were a natural choice for SOFI Foundation for this project, also when you take into consideration that almost everybody we asked, including as well the immigrants themselves as the representatives of the economic life.

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CHAPTER 4HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

Denmark

1. How to attract? – Usability (what for)– Individuality (focus on personal characteristics)

2. Physical frame– NO (politicians)– IT– Funding (no politicians)

3. Teachers– Didactic approach– Re-education teachers

4. Focus– Immigrants – Long time unskilled unemployed– Illiterates

5. Drop out– Carrot (better job) – labor market– Didactics– Cut the support for the participants living support

6. Purpose– Job– Better job– Social science (democracy, hobby – in the folk school)

France

- Accountancy / management- Agricultural - technical- Informatics- Environment

Spain

- Continuous / permanent training- Manual labor- Computer Science- Professional Recycling

Poland

- Tourism, agro tourism- Financial resources - SME MG- Professional reconversion- Agriculture – farming

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- Languages- Informatics- Geographical events- Exchange of experience- Environmental issues

Hungary

- Agriculture- Entrepreneurship- Eco-tourism- Professional reconversion- Youth – belonging to the community

Romania

- Agricultural- Tourism, agro tourism, ecology- Moral, civic, religious education, behavior, general culture,

communication etc. - Medicine, social work- Informatics- Zootechnics aspects- New qualifications for the job- Management, marketing, economy, SMI assurance- Legislation; public administration, international relations- Foreign language

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CHAPTER 5CONCLUSIONS

The hierarchy of needs

EU countries (DK, FR, ES)Accession countries (PL, HUN, RO)

Recommendation: - To create a free market in adult education field- Motivation – common problems

EU countries1. Motivation2. Infrastructure: physical and mental3. Immigrants4. Depopulation5. Marginalisation

Accession countries1. Agriculture - new techniques needs, EU legislation regarding

exporting agriculture products, technical conditions, information seminars, debates

2. Tourism & languages – agro / bio / eco tourism, MG, MK, foreign languages

3. SME MG – quality control, new technologies, fund raising, project management, MK

4. Communication & Information – using a PC, using telecommunication tools, using Internet, promotion on the NET, e- commerce, tele work, e learning, ODL

5. Civic education – community involvement, citizenship, belonging to EU, moral education, legislative education, medical and social education, democracy, dialogue with PA, national and EU values, youth motivation

6. Environmental education – protection, preservation, information

In EU there is an existent adult education system which needs to be improved and in the Accession countries there is no coherent adult education system therefore we start from the community in order to build the system.

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Documents

· Web viewThe SAERA project aims to develop a strategy for adult education in the rural areas through the means of TeleCenters and by establishing partnerships at local and European