education

Our Athena++ reform plan was made available to the wider public at the beginning of February 2017, aiming to spark further debate. In the upcoming months, we will be presenting our ideas to government representatives, MPs, political parties, professional associations and the media in Slovakia.

The Lithuanian Free Market Institute was shortlisted among three finalists for this year’s award for its textbook for upper secondary school students Economics in 31 Hours. The Educational Learning Resources Award recognizes excellence in innovation, pedagogical value and practicality of educational resources.

Slovak education needs a consumer-selected group of people and schools that do not wish to offer quality education, and rather just teach the same curriculum year after another, not considering the well-being of children. Many people will have to leave the field of education and a lot of old structures will have to disintegrate.

LFMI was named one of six finalists for this year’s Templeton Freedom Award for its textbook of economics – Economics in 31 Hours – that is giving the next generation of Lithuanian youth a fighting chance to get the economics right by teaching how property rights, free exchange, profit and competition shape decision-making in our everyday lives.

More than half Lithuan.ian schools started the new school year with a different – innovative – approach towards teaching of economics. Published last year, Economics in 31 Hours has already reached almost 54 per cent of 9th and 10th grade students country

There is a long history of schooling in Estonia, education is highly valued. As an IT-country, Estonia is working on better integration of IT into curricula. Our challenges are related to demographic changes, changes in school network and making teaching a more attractive profession.

Since 1993, the great majority of public institutions have been managed by local governments. The introduction of KLIK (Klebelsberg Institution Maintenance Centre) led to a myriad of changes in the everyday life of every teacher and student. Financial centralization has transformed previously easy everyday tasks into heavily bureaucratic and difficult.

The sequence of events in Poland might sound familiar to many of you. Hungary experienced quite a similar scenario. Clearly, Poland is not an isolated case. Political radicalisation and anti-democratic backtracking might be contagious.

Speaking of visions, the lack of consensus extends beyond politics. Many employers have been lobbying for more practical education, especially on the level of secondary schools. This has been opposed by most experts on education.

Estonia has set itself the goal of making better use of digital opportunities in teaching and developing students’ digital competence - the ability to use digital technology in order to better cope with studying and working, communicating within communities and simply as citizens in a rapidly changing information society.