On 21 February 2007, the European Commission issued a new Communication on the Lisbon Strategy in education, the Education & Training 2010 (ET 2010) Agenda. This document is entitled “A coherent framework of indicators and benchmarks for monitoring progress towards the Lisbon objectives in education and training” (COM (2007) 61 final). If adopted, which requires the consent of the member states and the European Council, this initiative would replace the 29 current indicators used to monitor ET 2010 progress with a set of 20 ‘core indicators’.  Each of these would be operationalised by a larger number of more concrete and specific ‘context indicators’.  Nine of the core indicators proposed were already to be found in the old list of 29. Eleven are new proposals. The 20 core indicators would be grouped into 8 thematic areas. The European Commission hopes that this new ‘framework’ is more coherent than the previous one, and better reflects the policy priorities of the ET 2010 strategy. The new system also incorporates the ‘five European benchmarks’, which the Commission adopted a few years ago. Indicators in the particular area of higher education are unchanged from the earlier framework. They concern ‘higher education graduates’ and ‘cross-national mobility’. A number of other sector-unspecific indicators have a bearing on higher education too. This Communication is a hard read by any standards. It is practically incomprehensible without a deep knowledge of its many predecessor documents. Those ambitious enough to tackle it are advised to first consult the ACA publication The Future of the University, which contains an introduction to the Lisbon Strategy and its education agenda. The Communication
The Future of the University