Closing the learning gap: uncovering causes and effective policy interventions for declining youth skills in mathematics, reading, and science
Forthcoming
Status as published by the data source.
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.
- Status
- Forthcoming
- Deadline
- (time not stated)
- Opens
- Published
- Total budget
- €12,000,000
- Grant range
- €3,000,000 – €4,000,000
- Country
- European Union (EU-wide)
- Programme
- Horizon Europe (HORIZON)
- Official page
- Open at the source portal
Other calls under Horizon Europe (HORIZON)
- PV based electrification of the economy: Designing & optimising PV systems supporting industrial electrification and promoting participation in electricity markets (EUPI-PV Partnership)
- Advanced TSO control rooms to enhance grid observability, stability and resilience
- Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADSM) for more efficient and flexible distribution grids
- Community of practice - Data-Driven Decision-Making in Energy
- Industrial processes and equipment for innovative, reliable and scalable tandem technologies (EUPI-PV Partnership)
- Integrated Approaches for Retrofitting Infrastructures with Innovative Energy Storage Technologies
- Demonstration of hydropower technologies for efficient and forward-looking refurbishment of existing hydropower plants
- Delivery of industrial CCUS clusters – Societal Readiness pilot
All calls under this programme
Similar opportunities
- Contribution of basic skills to productivity, innovation, competitiveness and economic growth
- Fostering competences for the green transition
- Facilitate the engagement of European stakeholders in international digital standardisation (CSA)
- Making Europe a global magnet for talent - Attracting and retaining students, researchers and high-skilled workers from outside the EU
- MSCA Choose Europe for Science 2027
- Open topic: Strengthen Europe's social model and sustainable competitiveness through productivity
Where this came from
- Source document
- https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/data/topicDetails/horizon-cl2-2027-01-transfo-06.json
- Document fingerprint
b85e83ea36e525f0(SHA-256, first 16 hex characters)- Retrieved
- First recorded here
What has changed
- url first recorded as https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-cl2-2027-01-transfo-06 on
- currency first recorded as EUR on
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- budget_total first recorded as 12000000.00 on
- deadline first recorded as 2027-09-23 on
- opens_on first recorded as 2027-05-13 on
- published_on first recorded as 2025-12-12 on
- status_basis first recorded as source_status on
- status first recorded as forthcoming on
- title first recorded as Closing the learning gap: uncovering causes and effective policy interventions for declining youth skills in mathematics, reading, and science on
Data source
© European Union, 2026. Source: EU Funding & Tenders Portal. Reused under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU — CC BY 4.0.
Retrieved from the source on .
The source last updated this document on Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:43:31 GMT.
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