Municipalities in Latvia may have to look for ways to finance the replacement of school textbooks with new ones, says Latvian Minister of Education and Science Anda Čakša.
Of the EUR 119.7 million allocated towards priority activities in the education and science sector, EUR 4.2 million will go towards various digital solutions and their improvement, development and procurement of new digital education materials, as well as maintenance of e-schooling and improvement. The additional funding allocated is EUR 14 million smaller than what the Ministry of Education and Science had requested in budget negotiations.
Čakša explained that the accessibility of digital platforms will be ensured in full. She said there are plans to look for funding necessary to develop teaching materials using various structure funds.
The minister is generally positive about the size of the allocated funding because it will allow the sector to implement both the increase of teachers’ wages in accordance with the schedule agreed upon in spring and the transition to education in Latvian language only. At the same time, she agrees that science could use a bigger amount of funding. According to information from the Ministry of Education and Science, an additional amount of EUR 17.6 million is already planned for higher education and science next year.
Representatives of the education sector made multiple attempts to secure necessary funding to improve teaching materials. The head of National Centre for Education Liene Voroņenko agrees.
Latvian Trade Union of Education and Science Workers chairperson Inga Vanaga previously criticised the fact that
teachers have basically become hostages of the situation, because the problem of teaching materials has to be resolved in cooperation with municipalities,
but their capabilities vary.
“Basically the entire [competence-based content adoption] cycle is over. There were exams, but there is still a lack of education materials. It’s the same as telling defence sector workers to go protect the border without arms, to ask the patient to hand a scalpel during a surgery or to ask schools to buy products and feed children using their own funds,” said Vanaga. She stressed that the rhetoric to keep hanging on to educational quality indicators until all the necessary resources are provided should cease.
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