26. Notes that all children have equal dignity from the point of view of learning and have the right to a basic education; stresses therefore that pupils’ personal situations, e.g. gender, family circumstances, minority or migrant background, a disability and their own learning difficulties (e.g. dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia) must be taken into account and that these pupils must be given targeted encouragement and educational assistance adapted to their specific needs from the outset, in order to avoid the reproduction of social exclusion and the risk of poverty by enhancing their chances for entering the labour market; stresses t ...[+++]hat children with no identity papers must be enabled to attend school; recognises that reforms in the fields of integration policy and education policy respectively cannot be considered as separate; proposes, against this background, desegregation policies to change the social make-up of ‘disadvantaged’ schools and supports forms of positive discrimination such as priority education zones and programmes providing targeted support for schools in disadvantaged areas; also points out that, as many studies show, educational establishments which have greater problems as regards coexistence and integration among pupils also have higher drop-out rates and therefore advocates the need for an inclusive school climate; notes, furthermore, that ineffective policies on work-life balance increase the instances of early school leaving and academic failure in general and that it is necessary to intensify efforts to improve work-life balance policies;

29. Regrets that the number of early school-leavers still remains too high in the EU; points out that a reduction of only 1 % in the number of early school-leavers could bring some 500 000 potential workers onto the labour market; calls therefore on the Member States to implement more effective policies, based on high-quality, modern education and vocational training, to prevent early school leaving and remove barriers to remaining in education, to offer learning and training alternatives and retraining possibilities to students with learning difficulties or disabilities and to develop effective links between initial training and the w ...[+++]orld of business; underlines the importance of early education for developing not only the future functional skills of people, but also their capacity to learn, to specialise and to develop further, and calls for the development of a coherent, holistic, long term approach to early childhood education and care as proposed in the relevant Commission Communication;

25. Calls on Member States to take all measures to combat the high drop-out rate among pupils, thereby enabling them to gain additional qualifications and facilitating their future labour market insertion;

At present in the majority of Member States, 50% of all pupils at this level learn at least one foreign language and curricula in the great majority of countries offer all pupils the possibility of learning a minimum of two foreign languages during compulsory education.

I would like to talk briefly about school boards in Quebec. André Caron, president of the Fédération des commissions scolaires du Québec, said recently that this was an abuse of the law and power (1115) By acting this way, the federal government will deprive Quebec school boards of significant financial resources used to organize busing for 650 students daily.

9. Action 3: Underlines the need to pay particular attention to disadvantaged groups, such as immigrants, the disabled and those with learning difficulties, within the framework of efforts to improve levels of educational attainment; draws attention to the role that e-Learning could play in improving the educational attainment of pupils living in isolated rural areas;