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GPKT Meeting Report 11

Education Working Group Meeting

26 November 2004 / Gjilan/Gnjilane

Rationale

Following the last meeting of the Education Working Group (WG) at a session of the GPKT Kumanovo Conference in September 2004, a follow-up meeting of the Education Working Group was held on November 26, 2004. Hosted by the Gjilan/Gnjilane municipality Didactic Centre, the meeting explored proposals to establish a GPKT Education Committee or Parent-Teacher Association, and discussed possible next steps for joint action in the micro-region.

Summary of Discussion at the Kumanovo conference, September 2004

Around 20 members of the Working Group participated in the Education session at the conference, and comments and discussion were also taken from the substantial audience this workshop attracted. Following introductions and a short presentation on education cross-border activities so far, participants focussed on identifying common problems encountered in GPKT education:

The general lack of resources in all municipalities was noted, including lack of equipment, libraries, textbooks in particular, and fundamentally, insufficient classroom space and teaching staff.
The lack of amenities available, particularly in villages, including secondary schools, is a problem that results in students often travelling long distances.
The need for pre-school education to be addressed and integrated into broader educational and social policy frameworks.
The problems of accessing higher education and career development opportunities.

Participants then identified specific lines of action that could be taken to help resolve these problems and benefit the educational communities in the micro-region:

The need for ‘sharing’ languages in the micro-region as a means for the economic survival of new generations.
Sharing of educational resources more generally, as a means to cutting costs and providing better services to the citizens of GPKT.
Further contacts of children of different communities across GPKT (following the first example of the schools ‘competition day’ held in Preševo in November 2003).
The establishment of a more formalised GPKT Education Committee, to be developed on the basis of the existing Working Group, in order to lead and co-ordinate work on specific educational issues, activities and co-operation in the micro-region. This proposal received particularly enthusiastic support from all participants.

In general, strongly support was expressed for the GPKT initiative and for continued and increased co-operation between all groups in the micro-region in the field of education.
 

Discussion and Conclusions

The meeting began with discussion of the main conclusion of the last meeting of the Education Working Group: the establishment of a GPKT Education Committee.

Within this context of greater co-ordination and co-operation, participants gave a warm welcome to the two representatives from Trgoviste, the ‘new’ municipality in the GPKT micro-region – this meeting in Gjilan / Gnjilane was the first Working Group meeting with Trgoviste participation.

With the objective of facilitating improved co-ordination and efficiency, it was agreed that the Committee should have two main functions: to assist decision-making and planning on joint activities, and to improve co-ordination and communication for increased effectiveness of joint action.

With respect to the remit of the GPKT Education Committee, participants agreed that this should include teachers from pre-school / kindergarten schools, primary schools and secondary schools, and parents of children at these schools. It was decided not to include higher education as out of the four municipalities, only Gjilan / Gnjilane has a tertiary faculty (Education / Teacher Training).

Concerns were raised that if the Committee had membership limited to a selected few, then the wider support of parents and other teachers from the micro-region might be lost.

It was therefore decided that a simple structure of communication / co-ordination points would be established, but dependent on the activity being undertaken, additional teachers and parents could of course add their support and participate in activities as they wished.

(For example, in the hypothetical situation that a series of puppet or theatre shows is organised by the GPKT region schools, art teachers or parents skilled at making costumes would probably wish to be involved, and so a structure which welcomes this kind of activity-specific support, while still maintaining efficient co-ordination, would be ideal).

The structure proposed and agreed on by participants is outlined below:

In the afternoon, the participants discussed possible activities to be implemented by the Working Group.

A significant part of the this discussion was sparked by the presentation by the NGO Search for Common Ground (SFCG) on their multi-ethnic and multi-lingual education work in Macedonia (already being implemented in Kumanovo).

SFCG staff presented their two successful projects, the ‘Mozaik’ multi-ethnic and multi-lingual pre-school programme, and the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual children’s television and outreach programme, ‘Nashe Maalo’. This presentation sparked a great deal of interest and discussion on the possible application of these models, or some aspects of the activities, to the GPKT area.

Although the point was made that as there are few very mixed communities, (most being either strong majority Albanian, Macedonian or Serbian communities), there might be a couple of towns where a programme such as Mozaik could work. In terms of the ‘Nashe Maalo’ television and outreach programme, participants agreed that some form of this programme could be transferable to the GPKT environment.

In terms of next steps, each municipality agreed to return home and work on developing at least one idea for a concrete activity to be undertaken by the Working Group before the next meeting, scheduled for late January 2005.
 

Other activities at the meeting

Participants also completed training needs questionnaires at the meeting, and on the basis of these, twenty will be selected and invited to attend a project skills training seminar in mid-December 2004.

The Working Group meeting was also covered by local television. The local Gjilan / Gnjilane TV Vali, heard about the event and independently telephoned EWI staff to ask if they could come and film some footage of the multi-ethnic micro-region event. A camera crew came into the meeting and filmed for about 20 minutes, and this footage was combined with a short interview of the EWI Project Manager about the GPKT project, and was later broadcast later that night.

Participants at the meeting

Kumanovo
Dragisa Cvetkovic
Zlatko Krstevski
Tome Spirovski
Keti Berjanovski
Denkovska Mira
Shyqeri Xhaferi
Zlatko Krstevski

Trgoviste
Natasa Tasic
Dusan Spasic

Presevo
Zeqirija Ramadani
Feti Shaipi
Nazmije Arifi
Selami Mustafa
Azem Ahmeti
Lulzim Mehmeti
Dragan Tomic
Raif Sherifi
Dusko Ristic
Hanumshahe Agushi

Marko Lovrenkovic, Vilma Venkovska-Milcev, and Kornelija Cipuseva presented on behalf of Search for Common Ground.

Karmit Zysman and James Nicholls from the Discovery Centre participated as observers.

Chrissie Hirst and Valbona Tahiri facilitated the meeting and represented EWI.
 

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