It is well established that education is an important prerequisite for sustainable development and effective participation of citizens in socio-economic progress. This is highlighted by the fact that specific educational goals concerning reduction of early school leaving rates, below 10%, and achieving at least 40% of 30-34–year-olds completing third level education, are included in the “Europe 2020” agenda.

The long-term strategic objectives of EU education and training policies are:

• Making lifelong learning and mobility a reality.
• Improving the quality and efficiency of education and training.
• Promoting equity, social cohesion and active citizenship.
• Enhancing creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training.

EU level activities are being developed to address priority areas on each level of education and training – early childhood, school, higher, vocational and adult education – based on these overall aims.

PLANET has extensive experience in successfully providing value-adding services to governmental agencies and organisations active in the field of education and educational institutions.

In the past years, PLANET has provided consultancy and technical assistance for a large range of programmes and projects aiming to implement EU policies and achieve integrated strategies and goals such as:

• Use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the educational procedure accompanied with measures such as the development of digital educational material, training of teachers in ICT, supply of infrastructure hardware and software, etc.
• Tackling of social exclusion in education, promoting an open educational system for all and confronting early school leaving with special programmes, such as intercultural education, establishing special educational zones in areas with social economic problems, etc.
• Reinforcement of innovation in education, new educational curriculums and methods, and promotion of entrepreneurship.
• Upgrade of administration of the educational system by enhancing procedures and the structures effectiveness and efficiency.

Having a perennial involvement in educational procedures and projects, PLANET has developed an integrated range of consultancy services supporting policy development and relevant decision making, and providing technical assistance in order to transform policy decisions into coherent measures and specific actions. The Provided services provided refer to all phases of programme/project management extending from preliminary studies, project design and planning, project specification, support to implementing bodies, etc., to final incorporation of programme/project outputs into the educational system, assessment of results and programme/project evaluation.

PLANET services incorporate a complete range of consulting disciplines in order to assure effectiveness and efficiency of educational interventions and a high coverage of clients’ needs: economic and social policy development, public investments programme management and evaluation, ICT services, operations improvement and performance management, organizational restructuring, capacity building and HR management.