Closing the learning gap: uncovering causes and effective policy interventions for declining youth skills in mathematics, reading, and science

Projects funded under this destination should contribute to the following expected impacts in the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2025-2027^[1]:

• Strengthening social and economic resilience and sustainability
• Boosting inclusive growth and reducing vulnerabilities effectively

The expected impacts reflect the two-pronged nature of the destination. On the one hand, research funded by this destination will improve the understanding of how the macro drivers of change (technological change, climate change, new global trade patterns, along with migration, human mobility, and other demographic changes) impact society and inform policy makers on how to mitigate negative consequences and harness newly created opportunities. The results obtained should improve the understanding of the interplay between different drivers of change and their social, ethical, political, and economic implications. The improved understanding of these challenges and their economic, social, and distributional impacts will fill in the research gaps while also inform the design and assessment of policies addressing existing and emerging challenges, including in the areas of education, well-being and mental health.

On the other hand, research and innovation investment should be geared towards deepening the understanding of how ongoing changes impact society, with a specific emphasis on the key objectives of boosting inclusive and sustainable growth and effectively reducing vulnerabilities, poverty and inequalities. This knowledge should provide valuable insights to policymakers to design and assess policies that effectively address vulnerabilities while capitalizing on emerging opportunities.

Overall, the destination’s activities will help promote the EU’s inclusive growth, resilience, and fair transition towards climate neutrality, by providing solid analytical evidence to implementing actions related to:

• The European Pillar of Social Rights, and its Action Plan with its three ambitious targets (78% employment rate, 60% of population with yearly training, and reduction of the number of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion by at least 15 million by 2030)
• the European Education Area and its EU-level 2030 targets
• The Union of Skills (including envisaged initiatives on skills portability and the European Strategy for Vocational Education and Training, the Pact for Skills and the Skills Agenda)
• the first-ever EU Anti-Poverty Strategy and the European Affordable Housing Plan
• The Union of Equality policies and strategies, including:
  • the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030^[2] (in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities^[3]); the European Accessibility Act (Directive 2019/882), and the European Disability Card
  • The Gender Equality Strategy 2020 – 2025 and the Directive combating violence against women and domestic violence
  • EU Anti-racism Action Plan 2020-2025
  • The Strategic EU Framework for Roma Equality, Inclusion and Participation 2020-2030
  • The LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025
• The Communication on Demographic change in Europe: a toolbox for action
• The EU’s just transition policy framework, in line with the 2040 Climate Target Plan, including the Just Transition Mechanism, the Social Climate Fund, and the Council Recommendation on ensuring a fair transition towards climate neutrality
• The new Pact for European Social Dialogue and the Council Recommendation on strengthening social dialogue in the EU.
• The European Child Guarantee
• The Council Recommendation on adequate minimum income
• The Commission Communication on a comprehensive approach to mental health
• The new Pact on Asylum and Migration and its accompanying actions, initiatives and legislation.

A new European Partnership on Social Transformations and Resilience^[4], focused on the social sciences and humanities (SSH), will be launched to make use of their potential to foster resilience, fairness and inclusiveness, and social cohesion in the light of changes in climate and environment, technology, demography, and unexpected shocks. The Partnership will fund research and innovation activities in the areas of the future of work, modernisation of social protection and essential services, education and skills development and a fair transition towards climate neutrality.

Applicants are encouraged to consider, where relevant, the services offered by the current and future EU-funded European Research Infrastructures, particularly those in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) domain^[5].

Where applicable, proposals should leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), as well as data from relevant Data Spaces. Particular efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this research is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).

To maximise the impacts of R&I under this Destination in line with EU priorities, international cooperation is encouraged whenever relevant in the proposed topics.

Research on social and economic transformations funded by topics in the present Work Programme will build upon its predecessors in Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe and further push the boundaries of state-of-the-art knowledge. It will do so by further engaging with a vast array of stakeholders, not limited to universities and research centres, but also extending to social partners (trade unions and business organizations), civil society organizations, practitioners, VET providers, and SMEs.

The destination will rely on a carefully balanced mix of actions, to bring together a balanced and appropriate set of stakeholders to achieve research of the highest quality, while aiming at providing recommendations to policymakers at European, national, regional and local level that could have a beneficial societal and economic impact. In order to facilitate the latter, it will maximise the feedback to policy and the dissemination and exploitation of research and innovation results and practices in the domain of social and economic transformations.

[1] https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/6abcc8e7-e685-11ee-8b2b-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A52021DC0101

[3] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities

[4] see topic HORIZON-CL2-2026-02-TRANSFO-01 in this Work Programme

[5] https://ri-portfolio.esfri.eu/ for example CESSDA - Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives

Expected Outcome:

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Provide policymakers with a solid understanding of the structural causes for the decline in young people’s skills levels in mathematics, reading and science, including low and top levels of achievement, observed in the EU over the past 15 years.
• Generate rigorous, policy-relevant evidence about which teaching practices, programmes and policy actions can be effective to reverse that decline, including the role of curricula, structural aspects of education and training systems, physical and digital learning environments, and innovative teaching and learning methods (including their accessibility).
• Develop actionable advice to inform policy measures, programmes, future evaluations and actions for education and training systems in the field of basic skills.

Scope:

Young people's mathematics, reading and science skills, as measured by large-scale international assessments such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), have significantly declined in Europe over the past 15 years. This applies both to the low and top levels of achievement. Reversing that trend is one of the fundamental objectives of the Union of Skills.

While the research literature has well analysed the short-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the structural causes of the observed decline are still poorly understood. More in-depth research is necessary, using various data sources at national and international level. Several interrelated research questions remain to be addressed, such as:

• How have changes in teaching methods, curriculum design, and assessment practices influenced the decline in mathematics, reading and science skills over time?
• What role do digital distractions and shifts in reading habits from paper to digital devices play?
• What is the role handwriting and drawing for cognitive development?
• What is the link between acquisition of cognitive skills in maths, science and reading on the one hand and the socio-emotional skills, learning skills, self-regulation, school climate on the other.
• To what extent does the increasing (also migration-related) heterogeneity of the students make it more difficult to organise learning at school?
• How does parental involvement affect educational performance?
• Do different levels of parental involvement affect educational performance?
• What is the role of cultural institutions such as museums and libraries?
• What is the combined impact of socio-economic background and gender on gaps in educational performance?
• How do different levels of investment in public education, and teacher shortages and working conditions affect the educational performance of children?

Proposals should also take into account the perspective of young people and other relevant stakeholders as part of the data collection. Close cooperation with authorities and/or other institutions owning the data is essential and should be ensured.

Understanding the causes of this decline is the pre-condition for analysing the causal impact of various remedial measures and identifying effective policies and programmes to improve young people’s skills in mathematics, reading and science. Proposals should apply experimental and/or quasi-experimental methods for their analysis and could complement them with qualitative research methods. Proposals should also evaluate the costs associated with the policy measures or programmes analysed. Interdisciplinary approaches, combining insights from economics, sociology, psychology, neurosciences and education sciences, and more generally, the social sciences and humanities (SSH), are encouraged. Clustering and cooperation among selected projects under this call topic and other relevant projects are strongly encouraged.