Abstract:

The school in Italy, as in all developed countries, for years lived a deep crisis that is the subject of lively debate.
In recent years the policies of the knowledge society across Europe have been accompanied by a number of considerations relating to the education-training system.
The international surveys (IEA, OECD, OECD-PISA) show, especially for Italian schools, performance below the EU average, the cost is excessive in relation to the product, lack of a culture of evaluation and quality of service set mostly on formal aspects.
Specifically, the results on the PISA reading skills (15 Years old) report that the percentage of people with poor reading skills in 'EU tends to increase while, in many non-European countries higher education is a source of investment much more important'.

On the basis of its consultations, the EU Commission therefore proposes to concentrate its efforts to draw an updated strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training: in the period from now until 2020 the main goal of European cooperation will be to support the further development of education and training of the Member States to ensure: the personal, social and professional of all citizens, sustainable economic prosperity with greater employability, promotion of democratic values and cohesion social, active citizenship and intercultural dialogue.
These objectives should be part of a worldwide perspective: the Member States, in fact, recognize the importance of openness to the world at large as a prerequisite for the development and prosperity, through opportunities for education, training, excellent research and innovation will help the European Union achieve its goal of becoming a world-leading knowledge economies.

Europe suffers from some shortcomings in the education sector that will be important to address to avoid falling behind globally. For this reason it is necessary to apply an open method of coordination (OMC) which is effective and encourages the strengthening of political education and training. Training and education are therefore regarded as instruments of active labor market policy, in that they serve to bring the professional training of workers and young people to market needs. As already reported in the Delors Report, focus on training means focusing on human capital, the main resource, and greater competitiveness against other countries, jointly enhancing the sense of individual and collective responsibility, the main element that characterizes the values of European civilization should be preserved and adapted to the world of today and tomorrow: the basic aim is to "learn to learn" throughout the course of life. (lifelonglearning).

Approaches to implement these strategies differ from state to state in terms of pace of reforms, the intensity of the transfer of powers and areas to which it applies, controls or accountability, transparency and implementation. It is, however, shared objective and universal to-res cover the basic function of the school, with a dynamic conception of learning (for the whole of life) aims to equip young people with knowledge, skills, strategic skills and expendable encouraging the development of comprehensive and integrated person who learns to be, through research, mobility, cooperation, innovation, the recovery of new tracks to anticipate and overcome difficulties, to move around in labor and to adapt successfully in a constantly changing world.

Keywords:

Knowledge society, Learning to learn, lifelonglearning.