Bildung: EU hinkt Zielen hinterher und Analphabetenrate steigt[en] 

Each year, the Commission assesses the progress of member states in the area of education and training with regard to the Lisbon Strategy's goals. It uses 16 indicators , including participation in pre-school education, the number of higher education graduates, ICT skills, and investment in education and training with regard to five benchmarks agreed by member states to be achieved by 2010:

• No more than 10% of students should leave school early (aged 18-24);
• A decrease of at least 20% in the percentage of underachieving pupils in reading literacy;
• At least 85% of young people should have completed upper secondary education;
• An increase of 15% in the number of tertiary graduates in mathematics, science and technology, with a simultaneous decrease in the gender imbalance, and; 
• 12.5% of adults should participate in lifelong learning. 

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.