Meeting on 6 May, the Steering Committee of the Horizontal Facility action “Quality education for all” in Montenegro assessed the action’s progress so far.
Evgenia Giakoumopoulou, Head of Operations in the Council of Europe Programme Office in Podgorica opened the meeting and voiced her appreciation of the results achieved so far. Vesna Atanasova, Programme Manager in the Education Department of the Council of Europe welcomed the fifteen participants of the meeting and emphasised importance of providing support to the education sector during the pandemic.
Key results within a six months reporting period were presented. The action has continued to provide technical support to the Ethics Committee. The development of educational material on academic integrity to be used at the University of Montenegro is well on track as is the design of online courses on academic integrity for private universities. Through a public debate on students’ ethics involving prominent international speakers, the action has continued to raise awareness on this important issue. It is pleasing to note that online training on plagiarism prevention for universities’ ethics boards has attracted a great deal of interest.
With regards to democratic school culture, students from pilot schools in Montenegro joined their peers from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia in series of online democratic chatrooms. As part of the school-based grants, different NGOs have been working with students on education and special needs, awareness of bullying and the environment, and open dialogue to address historical events such as the Holocaust – the activities also involved surveys, young leaders’ education and teacher trainings.
As a specific response to the current health crisis, the committee members welcomed the creation of digital democracy classrooms in each pilot school to be used for the purpose of training, educating, awareness raising and/or other project activities.
The event was organised within the framework of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”.
