The joint European Union/Council of Europe Quality education for all action held its fourth Steering Committee meeting on 8 April 2021 in Belgrade. The meeting was attended by representatives of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, the two Education Institutes, the University of Belgrade, and EU Delegation to Serbia.
Tobias Flessenkemper, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Belgrade opened the meeting and pointed out that this action offered a great opportunity to strengthen the quality of education by developing competences for democratic culture (CDC).
Vesna Atanasova, programme manager at the Education Department of the Council of Europe informed the members that action results were not only more visible, but also more sustainable and that Serbia was one of the leaders in Europe in the implementation of CDC.
Representative of EU Delegation to Serbia, Irena Radinović pointed out that the action brought a variety of modalities in working with the schools which enhances the process of fostering a democratic culture in schools.
Anamarija Viček, state secretary in the Ministry of Education stressed out that action sustainability was very important for the Ministry as all the produced material would continue to be used even after the action has ended.
After the welcoming words, the project team presented the results from the previous period including the newly introduced regional action aimed at secondary school students “Democratic School Chatrooms” on topics such as human rights, empathy, challenges of online learning, hate speech etc. Another important information item shared during this meeting was that Reference Framework of Competences for democratic culture was now officially available in Serbian.
Some of the other activities in the previous period include 16 accredited webinars on CDC in practice for teacher of 60 project schools, the development of a publication of best practices in an online learning environment based on the practices of schools participating in the project, manuscript “Living Democracy in Families” – the manuals for parents based on Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture is finished.
The Steering Committee members agreed on the calendar of activities for the forthcoming six months. The work will be focused on additional capacity building of teachers, exchange of experiences, promotion of school activities, publications.
The action Quality education for all is implemented under the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022“.