On March 9-10, 2016, Director of Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education (SKVC) together with Lithuanian state institution officers and representatives of social partners took part in a meeting with European Commission (EC) representatives in Brussels.
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The meeting was carried out 2 weeks after the planned publishing date of the EC Staff working document Country Report Lithuania 2016 (Staff working document Country Report Lithuania 2016).
“It was a great opportunity not only to meet EC representatives, ask questions and get answers, but also provide our opinion both regarding actions, that could positively affect Lithuanian economic growth potential and society welfare, and regarding the reasoning behind the EC report”, – Nora Skaburskienė, director of SKVC, said.
In the area of education EC emphasizes that the number of people that have not graduated from secondary school is low and the number of students that get higher education is high. Therefore Lithuania is making good progress in achieving the main “Europe 2020” strategy goal related to education.
The secondary education results could be improved if the means of the policy that was recently approved are applied, e.g. applying mandatory early phase education and care for children starting from 5 years old and development of country-wide pupil abilities assessment system.
It is also notable that it is mandatory to improve the preparation of teachers and the usage of innovative training methods. Teacher society gets older and it is getting harder to attract young people to choose teacher profession.
The low rate of reading, poor mathematics results and the low level of participation in the programs of primary preparation and education are mentioned.
Even though the rate of higher education graduates is high, the acquired competences often do not meet the needs of employers.
R&D infrastructure and resources are scattered which does not allow to achieve internationally recognized results.
Higher education institutions and science institutes are more focused on education and fundamental researches lacking orientation to promotion of innovation and cooperation with business.
A smaller part of adults take part in life-long education programs (5% compared to EU average - 10,7%).
Presentation (Is education system performance geared towards long term needs of Lithuania?)in English can be found here.
