More than 100 teachers and education professionals from 40 project schools met and exchanged ideas in another round of Peer Learning events that took place from 28 June to 2 July in Šabac and from 5 to 9 July in Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia. Representatives of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development welcomed the participants and expressed their gratitude for all the hard work teachers put in fostering a democratic culture in schools.
“Hearing about what other schools do to promote chosen competences gave us ideas of what we can do in our school and community” and “ I’m glad we had an opportunity to learn about gender mainstreaming since it is a very important subject”, are just some things teachers shared after the event.
Schools were tasked with creating action plans for developing and promoting chosen competences for democratic culture during the 2021/22 school year. Mentor schools presented their old action plans and explained how they implemented competences in their schools and local community. They, along with the Council of Europe trainers, guided new schools in creating their action plans. Representatives of new schools expressed how important it was to hear from mentor schools and to be able to exchange ideas with other schools involved in the project.
Another important aspect of these peer learning events was to create an environment for schools to generate ideas for future activities which they would first present to project teams and then implement together with students, parents and local community. It was important to think about promoting competences not only through curricular, but also through extracurricular activities. Along with all of this, participants discussed how to include activities focused on digital citizenship education and gender mainstreaming in the context of competences for democratic culture.
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“.
