On 12 November 2020, Commissioner Mariya Gabriel launched the Education & Training Monitor 2020. This is the ninth year of the Monitor, which yields twenty-seven detailed country reports regarding the status of education and training, allowing for a pan-European comparison. Each country’s progress, as defined in the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020), is measured.

The 2020 report refers to data from the calendar year 2019. By all measures, European countries have significantly expanded the participation in education following the agreement of these education and training benchmarks in 2009. This year the Monitor has a special focus on digitilisation and online tools and also examines the impact of COVID-19.

The report contains substantial up-to-date data in the area of higher education mobility, including the following points:

· In 2018, 13.5% of higher education graduates in the EU-27 were mobile, meaning that they studied abroad, partly or entirely

· Overall in the EU-27, 9.1% of graduates had a temporary experience abroad, (‘credit mobility’), and 4.3% graduated in a country which was not the one where they received their upper secondary school diploma (‘degree mobility’).

· Within the EU, Luxembourg, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Germany and Finland (in descending order) have the highest shares of outwardly mobile tertiary graduates.

· The number of inward degree-mobile graduates can be read as a measure of the attractiveness of the education system. On this indicator, France tops the list in terms of absolute numbers (78, 837 inwardly mobile graduates) and Luxembourg in terms of percentage (24.2%).

· Overall, 30.3% of inward degree-mobile graduates to the EU originate in the EU, followed by graduates originating in Asia (22.2%), Africa (15.9%) and non-EU European countries (13.5%).

Additionally, the report contains suggestions for the future (with one eye on the upcoming new Multi-Annual Financial Framework 2021-2027). A few selected key suggestions emerging from the report are as follows:

· Availability of public support for learning mobility has a particular impact on students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and students with disabilities, who have been identified as less likely to participate in such activities.

· Additional policy measures supporting learning mobility include foreign language education for both students and higher education institution staff.

· All Member States but one (Bulgaria) provide targeted mobility grants, needs-based portable grants or universal portable grants to disadvantaged learners.

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