Representatives of the beneficiary institutions in the committee, namely the Ministry of Education, the Bureau for Educational Services, the Ethics Committee, the University of Montenegro, the Ministry of European Affairs, the Delegation of European Union in Montenegro all gathered in Podgorica on 18 April 2023 for an introduction to and discussions on phase III of the Horizontal Facility action “Quality education for all”.

Head of Office at the Council of Europe Programme Office in Podgorica, Lejla Dervišagić opened the meeting, expressing her expectations that phase III will be as successful as previous phases of the Horizontal Facility. Vesna Atanasova, Head of Unit in the Division of Formal and Non-Formal Education of the Council of Europe told participants that many initiatives within the Council of Europe such as the Council of Europe Platform on Ethics, Transparency and Integrity in Education (ETINED) and the Education Policy Advisors Network (EPAN) will serve to provide include high quality expertise in project implementation.

The local project team provided an overview of the background, action objectives, activity plan, project organisation, challenges and opportunities, expectations from beneficiary institutions and other critical information.

Promoting digital citizenship education and competences for democratic culture among schools and local communities will be the focus of the phase III. Also, the Council of Europe will continue to support accessibility and equity of inclusive education for all children at all education levels. The action will not pilot its activities among schools but will use accumulated experience from the previous pilot schools.  Further to the Law on academic integrity, the action will strengthen and consolidate institutions and policies and actively promote ethics principles among the student population.

The committee members’ comments indicated that they have a common understanding of the action’s purpose. Beneficiaries expressed their satisfaction with planned activities and the buy-in of the action from their side is obvious. Whilst it is an ambitious agenda it is realistically implementable, and the committed engagement of all stakeholders is crucial for its success.

The next committee meeting is scheduled for November 2023.

The event was organised within the framework of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Türkiye“.