On 27 December 2018, an LSG-CSO forum entitled “Legal Powers of the Local Governing Body in the Field of Pre-School and Secondary School Education and the Efficiency of Their Enforcement” was held in Dilijan in the scope of the “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project funded by the European Union.
The event was organised by the “Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS” NGO, a project consortium member.
Aleksander Shagafyan, the Head of the RA State Inspectorate of Education, was present at the event. He attached importance to their participation in similar events. “This is a platform where the state agency has an opportunity to address civil society organisations, professionals and stakeholders to present the legislative framework and toolset, to say that there is a constant need for improvement. In order to have a good educational system, it is important to cooperate,” she said.
Suren Avetisyan, the Head of the Public Education Department of the Inspectorate, presented the results of studying the work of the unit dealing with education issues of Ijevan and Stepanavan communities, as well as the results of the inspections in the kindergartens of the same communities. He also spoke about the powers of local government set out in the legislation and regulating the educational sector, particularly failure to fulfill the functions stemming from those powers, as revealed through research carried out by the Education Inspectorate.
Questions related to the involvement of local government in the governing boards of public schools, involvement of school-age children in educational institutions, as well as support to inclusive education, were also discussed at the event.
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by a consortium of civil society organizations, which are the “Armenian Lawyers’ Association” NGO, Agora Central Europe o.p.s (an NGO from the Czech Republic), the “Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS” NGO, the “International Center for Human Development” Public Organization, the “SME Cooperation Association” NGO and the Union of Communities of Armenia.
The overall objective of the project is to enhance the influence of CSOs and their coalitions (networks) on the public policy process. This will enable the organizations (that already work in target coalitions) to gain new resources, unite civil society experts and encourage them to participate in the formation of local and national policy agenda, identify the common problems and priorities and to apply to the government with constructive and strategic policy initiatives.
In the scope of the project, sub-grants will be allocated to CSOs and CSO coalitions, aiming at public policy development and achieving tangible results in the 9 target sectors: justice, human rights, public finance management, business, education, social sector: social inclusion of children with disabilities, agriculture, economy, energy.
