Thank you for your letters of 3 March and 10 April reporting progress on this proposal, which Sub-Committee F considered at a meeting on 7 May.

  In the original explanatory memorandum you said categorically that the Government "will not agree these benchmarks as proposed", and we supported your position on this point. But we note that you seem now to accept that it is appropriate to set EU-wide targets for education and training.

  As a result we remain unclear what the Government's policy is in this area. In your letter of 10 April you refer to three key concerns that will need to be met before you sign up to the benchmarks, but I have to say that these hardly justify the abandonment of your previous outright opposition to the setting of targets. First you say that benchmarks should be at EU level and should not define national targets nor policy decisions to be taken by national governments, but in its Communication the Commission went out of its way to explain that it had chosen not to translate the benchmarks into benchmarks at the national level. Secondly, you say that the benchmarks must be "clearly defined, technically feasible and based on comparable data". But the five benchmarks proposed by the Commission seem to be clear enough: has their wording been changed in any way? Thirdly, you insist that the benchmarks should be consistent with the Lisbon agenda. But as the origins of this exercise lie in the conclusions of Lisbon European Council, it seems hardly likely that they would be inconsistent with it.

  We have cleared the document from scrutiny, but we would welcome any further comments and an account of the outcome of the Education Council on 5 May.

7 May 2003

  Further to your letter of 7 May to Margaret Hodge, I am writing to update you on this initiative, following the 5 May Education Council, where Margaret represented the UK.

  After considerable discussion, the Council adopted Conclusions on benchmarking (copy attached (not printed)). It was agreed that the benchmarks would:

—  be at EU, not national level;

—  not require equivalent national targets or direct national policy;

—  be clearly linked to the Lisbon objectives.

  UK agreement was subject to a unilateral statement on a technical point relating to definition of upper secondary education and the treatment of UK data. This statement, calling on the Commission to review its interpretation of "upper secondary" and align it as far as possible with that of the OECD, was accepted by the Council.

  The benchmarks will feature in the 2004 Spring Report to Heads of State and Government on the contribution of education to the Lisbon objectives. Work continues on indicators to support the Open Method of Coordination. The Commission has not ruled out proposing further benchmarks in the future: the UK has made it clear that we doubt whether they would provide any added value and that we should be concentrating on practical outcomes and the exchange of best practice rather than process.

23 June 2003