Lithuania Debates School Exam Reform

Author: infoerdve.lt editorial team

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda’s annual address has brought renewed attention to the role of exams in the education system, drawing support from Simonas Kairys, a member of the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, from the Liberal Movement. Kairys said the president’s comments echo his earlier proposal to strengthen teachers’ professional self-regulation and, over time, change how pupils are assessed.

The debate is relevant to school-leavers, parents, schools and teachers because Lithuania’s state maturity examinations, taken at the end of secondary education, are one of the main sources of pressure in the final stage of general schooling.

In his annual address on Tuesday, Nausėda said children should be prepared not only for exams but for independent life. He also emphasised the quality of education and mentioned a possible discussion on establishing Teachers’ Chambers, a professional self-governance institution for educators.

Kairys linked that direction to a broader education reform. He said such a change could not be carried out by one politician or within a single parliamentary term, and would require serious discussion among political parties.

Kairys, deputy chair of the Liberal Movement group in the Seimas, had previously called for full teacher self-regulation. In his view, a stronger and more independent professional community of teachers could become a condition for reducing the decisive role of centralised exams.

Under the approach outlined by Kairys, assessment of pupils’ achievements would depend not only on the centralised system, as it largely does now, but also more on schools and teachers themselves.

Kairys has said that before reducing the dominance of the exam system, Lithuania would first need to address teachers’ pay arrangements, cut bureaucracy, prepare a new teacher qualification development programme, revise the school management model, create a mechanism for pedagogical ethics and enable the self-regulation model referred to by the president.

For now, this is not an adopted decision to abolish exams. The discussion concerns a political direction and a possible basis for reform, which would still require concrete legislative steps in the Seimas.

Context & actions
About this article

Report
Share