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The recently published CIPDD policy review is about the Quality Assurance System in Georgian Schools.  A range of reforms to Georgia’s general education system are being carried out. Alongside measures to improve access to education and increase the level of transparency and democratization within the system, one of the main aims of the reforms is the improvement of the quality of education provided.

According to the author Simon Janashia, there are a number of problems associated with quality assurance in education. Firstly, no consensus exists within society on key issues. For example, what constitutes “quality” in education? Who is responsible for ensuring the quality of education? What effects does quality education have? There is also a lack of a specific strategy on how to go about improving educational standards. The supporting infrastructure needed to improve standards in schools is inadequate. Neither the state nor schools are working in tandem to achieve agreed outcomes.
The Georgian government has taken many positive steps to improve the education system; steps that may eventually lead to improved standards. Both international and local experience provide lessons that can be learned in this respect.   

International experience suggests that changes in central government policy have little effect when schools themselves lack responsibility and are not interested in improving standards. For this reason, it is essential to encourage change at the school level on the one hand, while raising the burden of responsibility on schools on the other.   

Measures to ensure quality are successful when it is acknowledged that quality assurance doesn’t just imply quality control, but also the development of a standardized system with appropriate support mechanisms. The international scholarly consensus on this issue is that it is impossible to develop and execute an effective strategy without first considering the systemic context and the needs of individual students. 

The author argues that the main problem with existing quality assurance mechanisms in Georgia is the use of outdated models by both the state and the public at large. Currently, more attention is being paid to results and measures that will result in short term improvement, rather than to approaches oriented towards the improvement of management and longer term measures. Huge amounts are being spent on the quality assurance of primary inputs. Teacher training, certification, textbook improvements and the national educational strategy are all allocated more financial and human resources than measures aimed at the longer term improvement of the educational process. In the CIPDD's  new paper Simon Janashia analyses draws attention to the existing problems and proposes possible solutions.

Georgian, English

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