Lithuania Education system ‘needs change to compete with leading countries’

The Lithuanian education system needs to be changed starting with kindergartens to have any chance of competing with the academic performance of leading countries, especially in Asia, education experts say.

Lithuanian educators believe that the general curriculum at schools is appropriate but the general approach to teaching and learning must be changed.

“The Results of Pisa test held by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development show that Europeans are at an intermediate level. Asian countries are the leaders. Shanghai, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Singapore – these countries are much better, as well as their education system. For example, in China kindergarten children are not only taught the English language or how to read a newspaper. Every morning children do sports for an hour and they do that again in the afternoon, it helps,” said Professor Carl H. Hahn.

“We understand that one of the competencies to be developed is having a global perspective. When we will teach children and ourselves to take responsibility, then we will certainly be able to initiate real change,” said educologist Dr. Austėja Landsbergienė.

“I propose to add simulation methods, certain tasks so that students would receive practical knowledge, skills, and be able to analyse the most common and topical global issues such as what they see in the newspapers. This would be a very good way to teach history. The same simulations can be applied to teaching physics, such as simulating the Swiss CERN laboratory work and analysing its findings,” said Dominykas Milašius, APCO WorldWide JAE strategic communications and public relations consultant.

LRT