EU lagging behind on education, illiteracy on rise 

The 2008 report  - the fifth in a series of annual progress reports - shows that the number of maths, science and technology graduates is increasing while the number of early school leavers is decreasing. It also indicates an increase in both upper secondary attainment and adult participation in lifelong learning. 

However, countries have failed to bring down the share of low performing readers. Instead of the targeted 20% decrease, illiteracy has actually increased by more than 10% since 2000. 

According to the Commission, all countries have their own relative strengths and weaknesses across the benchmark areas and "there are significant divergences between member states and fields". For example, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland and Slovenia "exceed the five benchmarks on average and are still progressing" while France, the Netherlands and Belgium show only "average performance below the benchmarks and have stopped progressing in this respect". 

Regarding reading skills, the benchmark lists Romania and Bulgaria at the bottom with 53.5% and 51.1% of "low achievers" respectively. Finland is the bloc's top performer on this (with just 4.8% low achievers), followed by Ireland (12.1%) and Estonia (13.6%).

For the other indicators, Poland has recorded the highest growth in maths, science and technology graduates since 2000 while Sweden has boosted the participation of adults in lifelong learning the most. The Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia both share the lowest number of early school leavers and record the highest number of young people completing upper secondary education.