Quality education for every child in Montenegro

PODGORICA, 24 February 2015 – UNICEF Montenegro hosted a conference entitled "Quality Education - Improving the Quality Assurance System" organized in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, the Education Bureau and the British Council.

Special attention was given to the efforts aimed at establishing an efficient system for consistent quality assurance.

"Quality assurance is one of the most important segments of the educational system, as well as of the other systems, and indeed, a lot has been done in this field in order to improve the quality system. Today, we have an opportunity to talk jointly - all the subjects listed – about a coherent and functional system of quality assurance in the field of educational institutions, and also about the improvement of the working methodology," said Vesna Vucurovic, Deputy Minister of Education. 

UK Ambassador to Montenegro Ian Whitting said that investing in quality education will undoubtedly provide an outstanding contribution to the society, not only through the economic development, but also through greater social participation, better system of justice, rule of law and the overall development of the society. „That is why quality should be at the central place of all discussions on education, and it must be protected by strict decisive measures implemented by the Institute for Education and other educational institutions," Ambassasdor Whitting concluded.

"We are learning so much now about child development through the evolving fields of neuroscience, child psychology and also the pediatrics. So, we need to harness this knowledge as it develops and as we learn more about the way children think, learn and thrive, to ensure better performance of the education system. And that is relevant in London, as it is in Podgorica, as it is in Beijing," UNICEF Montenegro Representative Benjamin Perks pointed out.

Expert for quality assurance in schools, Ken Buxton, who is an inspector of the Office for Standards in Education OFSTED in England, spoke about the need for further improvement of teachers’ competencies in order to improve the quality of education.

"We talk about the quality of teaching and we judge the quality of teaching not by what the teachers are doing in the classroom, though that is obviously important, we judge it on the impact on learning. We have to go with an open mind and we have to say right and watch what is happening in this lesson and see how well the children are engaging, what did they learn by the end of the lesson that they could not do before and how well are the different groups in there, the more able, the less able, the ones with special needs, how well they are all performing in that lesson, before we can make a judgment about teaching," said Buxton.

After the conference, Bureau for Education supervisors will be working on strengthening the methodology for assessing the quality of educational institutions, as well as on proposing the procedures and trainings for its effective implementation.

The conference will have a strong impact on the education reform, especially in the area of advancing the mechanisms for reviewing and improving the quality of education.