The article informs on current issues in science education in primary and secondary schools in the EU and outlines the potential future development of such teaching. The first part reports on the results of investigating the level of science literacy in the EU countries; these investigations show a little ability of graduates of primary and secondary schools to solve science problems which they canencounter in their everyday life.
It is obvious that science is today one of such fields, without which further development is unimaginable. Therefore, the EU called upon the experts in the field of science education to increase their activity and cooperation.
The initial material is a report "Science Education Now"[1], which summarizes the main problems of science education and provides a basis for new ideas of how to improve teaching. A number of European projects build on this report; they show a promising way to streamline the science education, primarily via inquiry-based learning