The future authorities must urgently work on a fundamental reform of the education system, which will put students at the center, said Snežana Kaluđerović, senior legal adviser at the Center for Civic Education (CGO).
She said that Montenegro had and still has solid public policies in the education system, but that the authorities are not consistent with the principles and the promises made, so, unfortunately, they are not implemented within the time frame and in the way they were designed.
"The structure and scope of the educational community in Montenegro are the biggest reservoir for party employment, trade in influence, and only through that lens, for now, do decision makers see that system," said Kaluđerović in an interview with the MINA agency.
She stated that, as a result, that education leads to the current state - perhaps the biggest crisis so far.
"From the recommendations of the Report on determining the quality of educational work of the Institute of Education, important public policies in the field of education can emerge, but the question is whether there is anyone who will read it among those who will decide on that field," added Kaluđerović.
Asked what she expects from future decision-makers and what the priorities should be, Kaluđerović said that the future authorities must urgently and inevitably work on a fundamental reform of the education system, which will put students at the center and create conditions for students to learn, listen and listen critically in educational institutions. reflects, explores and conducts dialogue.
Such reforms, as she said, must be implemented with an emphasis on strengthening the educational segment, ethics, but also the motivation of the best students to choose the teaching profession.
"Order, work and educational discipline, along with qualified teaching staff with knowledge and integrity, are prerequisites for revitalizing the education system and freeing it from the clutches of political parties, which have devastated it," said Kaluđerović.
She said that decades of marginalization of the education system, tolerance of ignorance, arrogance and lack of ethics, along with the continuation and intensification of bad practices in recent years, are paying off today.
"Instead of a serious approach and changes, today we are witnessing the appointment of persons unworthy of the educational calling, prone to fraud, influence peddling, such as the case at the "Maršal Tito" Elementary School in Ulcinj, and persons who abused their official position for personal gain, to individual director positions in schools. benefits, such as the case of the director of the Maritime High School in Kotor", stated Kaluđerović.
According to her, there are also situations where teaching staff come to work in an inappropriate state, under the influence of alcohol and opiates, and this goes without sanction.
"We are also witnessing a strange and controversial structuring of school boards, in which instead of representatives of competent institutions, those who represent party or particular interests are sitting," said Kaluđerović.
That, as she warned, does not contribute to the necessary and promised depoliticization of those institutions.
"We are witnessing illegal employment, setting standards and the like, so that the best candidate never gets a job," said Kaluđerović.
She stated that the reports on the school's self-evaluation are done only for the sake of order and that they are mostly evaluated as successful.
However, as Kaluđerović said, the Report on determining the quality of educational work, issued by the Institute of Education, is a document on the basis of which quality can be determined, and there are no excellent grades in institutions.
"Evaluations of teaching supervisors, evaluations of the control of the institution's work by the educational inspectorate, competition results, quality of workshops, training and extracurricular activities that the school organizes for students must be taken into account and adequately evaluated, in order to rank institutions in terms of quality and sound rules competition", said Kaluđerović.
She said that the model of education and training of the best students for deficient professions in the teaching profession, namely mathematics, physics, chemistry, should also be considered, bearing in mind the difficulty of those programs.
"Chemistry, physics and biology are taught theoretically by rote until college, and the highest achievements are the creation of competition-type tasks, while work in the laboratory and experimental knowledge at a basic level do not exist to the extent that we can compare with high-ranking countries on the PISA test," said Kaluđerović. .
As she stated, these are some of the reasons why students' top results are missing.
"Until this year, we had the highest standard of Montenegrin-Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian (CSBH) language classes, and devastating results on the PISA test," added Kaluđerović.
According to her, it is clear that, apart from the obviously disputed methodology of studying the curriculum, the overcrowding of students in institutions in urban areas, as well as the lack of staff in rural areas, contributes to the decline in quality.
"I emphasize that many bad practices were inherited from the previous period in which the Democratic Party of Socialists ruled with coalition partners, but also that the new authorities did not fulfill their promises and improved the system in the direction of fulfilling the public interest, so things are now in the escalation phase," Kaluđerović stated.
She said that, in addition to all these pressing problems, the CGE does not have high expectations from the new government, because they have seen from previous media reports that the Ministry of Education is treated as less important in government negotiations, that is, that the importance of education is not recognized.
Kaluđerović stated that not every child has an equal chance to access education.
"When I say this, I don't just mean going to school and attending classes, which every child has the right to. "Unfortunately, the overcrowding of institutions and the lack of teaching staff in certain professions have established the practice of shadow education, i.e. private teaching," said Kaluđerović.
According to her, the official teaching staff completely relies on that, not trying too hard for the children at school to understand and learn.
Kaluđerović said that this is where we come to the unequal financial possibilities of parents and guardians to afford private lessons.
"Therefore, it is much less likely that children from poorer families, and there are more and more of them, will reach the level of functional literacy compared to children from families with average or high incomes, regardless of their intellectual capacities," warned Kaluđerović.
She stated that it should be noted that the current government, as well as the previous one, has established priority locations where it is necessary to build new schools, kindergartens, and gymnasiums.
"Also, for many institutions, more modern teaching aids must be provided, teacher training must be planned and implemented for the application of various methods and forms of work, but also management methods must be changed, in order to seriously and without prejudice analyze the references of the teaching staff when hiring, i.e. that only the best candidates get a job," said Kaluđerović.
She said that there must be a base of missing personnel in education.
In accordance with that, as she said, it is necessary to educate the staff for these occupations, with motivational models such as high scholarships and salary supplements for occupations that are deficient in teaching.
"Practical work in elementary schools must become part of teaching, and within those subjects, the means, tools and equipment for teaching that we have and that need to be renewed must not serve as museum exhibits, but as frequently used tools of students for teaching," Kaluđerović added.
She said that, as far as capital investments for education are concerned, in December of last year, CGO submitted to the Government an Initiative for the construction of facilities for the production of electricity from renewable resources - photovoltaic panels for the production of electricity at educational institutions, hospitals and other similar public institutions that meet the conditions for installation.
They did this, as stated by Kaluđerović, aware that such an investment in the long term can significantly contribute to the economic profitability of that construction and more economical financing of the electricity needs of those institutions.
"To this day, we don't even have a statement from the Government about the possibility or justification of such an initiative, and what we had the opportunity to see were a lot of promotional events where the ribbons of long-started projects were cut. "We have too much PR and too little dedicated approach, and this is very much felt in education," said Kaluđerović.
CGO, as she said, will advocate for a change in such an approach of the authorities.
"But I'm afraid that it will take several more governments until the decision-makers understand that education is one of the key pillars of the sustainability and development of society," said Kaluđerović.
When asked how much of the change of government on August 30, 2020, was done in the field of educational system reforms, she replied that it is clear to everyone that only replacements took place, not essential changes, and that is why we do not have depoliticization of institutions.
"Legal changes are needed urgently, which would include, among other things, the establishment of legal criteria for who can be a member of the administrative/school board of the institution as one of the emergency intervention measures," said Kaluđerović.
According to her, the education system cannot recover with continuous changes of employees in decision-making and leadership positions, and constant cancellation of everything that came before, without sanctioning guilt in its own ranks.
"It seems that we are constantly renewing the material, which is not so bad when it would not cost us anything, but in our case it involves enormous material, but also wider, damage that generations cannot compensate for," concluded Kaluđerović.
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