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Education in Latvia’s transition: the challenge of management. Report on education in Latvia 2001/2002
Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS |
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The Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS has taken over the tradition of the Soros Foundation-Latvia (SFL) and is offering readers a new annual report on education in Latvia “Education in Latvia’s Transition: The Challenge of Management”.
The report discusses the changes in the Latvian education system over the last twelve years from different perspectives analyzing the quality of education, it’s accessibility and cost effectiveness.
The education system in Latvia had undergone a successful transition from a system suited to a planned economy to a system suited to a market economy and democratic society. But now new challenges have arisen as Latvia finds itself in competition with economies making another transition, where growth is driven not by ‘economic factors’ but by product and service innovation. This transition will require a radically different understanding from educational institutions and a significant shift in the structure of incentives to generate an adequate level of educational innovation and response. The transition to this new stage will depend less on the level of new public investment in education and more on the quality and innovation in the management of current investments and in the generation of non-public sources of investment. The challenge of education is as serious today as it was in 1990, but today it is the managerial traditions that have been established since independence that are in question.
The report has two parts. The summary presents an analysis of the changes in the education system as well as recommendations for further policy planning. The collection of articles consists of individual research reports covering the following topics:
- Management of Information (The measurement of education quality, centralized and standardized examinations, non-graded assessments in primary education);
- Educational Administration (The educational dimension of regional education reform, social correction system);
- Teachers Training (Pre-service training, aspects of the teacher’s professional development system);
- Higher Education (Student loans and access to higher education, the labour market experience of graduates from Daugavpils University, the ethnic and gender dimensions of university costs and benefits, higher education taxes and property). |
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