EUROPEAN COUNTRIES' EDUCATION AND ECONOMY SYSTEMS

Everything is growing fast in the changing world. Many countries and governments head toward rising generation, because they know that if they have equipped people in their country they can reach  their whole goals in the future. So, education is the main subject to achieve their goals. Portuguese and European countries have the same decision to head toward education system and they have a lot of historical background for their education systems.

We could see difficult times in the past for many countries and they tried to let off the hook. So, they cared about the education system. For example, Ireland lived in poverty in 1890s, but the Hibernian people were interested with education system for their children and they collected money to develop their country's welfare. They did it without government support and the level of participation in schools was over the three children in these  years. It was the very high ratio for the these days' European countries. Eventhough Germany had a  higher ratio for the level of participation in schools, the UK had the same ratio of Ireland. Just after these times, some things changed.

Some bad events influence the countries for their many subjects and the most important subject for this situation is education. If we bring back, we can see that Ireland wasn't interested in its education system in the process of the time because Catholic relegious orders managed the education. On the other hand, some countries reached the best development for their education system. Germany, USA, UK and Estonia had 75% development in their educations because they were interested in their education. In spite of that Ireland, Spain, Greece, etc. had 30% education development and, after the second war the UK invested in its education system and it researched a very high return in education level. So, investment in education system influced the country's economy.

People is interested in its education to have productive results. After the second war, Nothern Europe headed toward their education, mostly. Germany  had  the highest productive education results. So, the Germany had A very high level of return from this clever investment and continued their life standard through this strategy. But Ireland couldn't do the same because it wasn't interested in the education system. If the countries are interested in their education systems, they can reach low unemployment rates.

Many countries think how can they decrease their unemployment rate, and the country which has the best strategy can solve this problem. If we think in the case of Germany we see that it is interested in its education system, mostly. So, they reached a very good performance with their labor force and have been improving that along the time. But some countries couldn't achieve it.

If a country don't care about its education system directly, it can't achieve its goals. For example, Portuguese live a lot of complicated time with its education system. Many people didn't know how to read and write in 1970s, because the education system was not a priority for the government until then. Pisa 2000 (a system aiming to evaluate the quality of the education performed) has evaluated the Portuguese education system and suggested some reforms. Portuguese government changed something and put more towards education. The time of lessons and student and teacher's communication have improved. In this way, the country smooted away its bad things in its education system and it had a more efficient development.

Taking everything into account, if a country is interested in its education system it can be more efficient in every area and it can get a better development patern. Education can decrease the unemployment rate, increase productive results, create more production capacity. So, education is the most important issue when enviasing to atain a better development level.

Nisa İpar YILMAZ

References:

(http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/how-our-education-system-affects-the-economy-of-the-future-1.2132023)

https://portugal.com/portugal/information/economy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Portugal#Criticism)

[artigo de opinião produzido no âmbito da unidade curricular “Economia Portuguesa e Europeia” do 3º ano do curso de Economia (1º ciclo) da EEG/UMinho]