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PPMI has recently completed a study on educational support to facilitate integration of returnees in Lithuanian education system

7 Dec 2018

News
PPMI has recently completed a study on educational support to facilitate integration of returnees in Lithuanian education system

PPMI has recently completed a study on educational support to facilitate integration of returnees in Lithuanian education system, commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Science. This is the first study of such kind covering all Lithuanian municipalities and targeting ECEC, pre-primary, primary and secondary education institutions. We started with quantitative surveys of representatives of municipalities and educational institutions in all municipalities, complementing it with interviews with teachers, education support personnel, parents and children in municipalities selected for qualitative case studies and focus groups with relevant stakeholders at municipal and national level.

The results of this study provide important insights on the general trends of return migration of this age group in Lithuanian municipalities and allows to estimate the share of returnees who receive educational support. The main recommendations relate to adjustments in administrative data collection to carry out regular monitoring and periodical assessment of quality of educational support provided. It calls for a holistic approach to assessing returnees (and immigrants) needs upon (re)entering educational system, attributing more attention to their ’strengths’ (e.g. bilingualism or multilingualism) rather than focusing exclusively on lack of specific competences, improving initial and continuous professional training to better prepare ECEC professionals and teachers for working in diverse classrooms among others. The final report is available here.