Laima Andrikienė: ‘The Opposition’s fears about elitism are groundless because, instead of carrying out the selection of pupils, the Millennium Schools (upper secondary) would make their infrastructure available for pupils of all schools in the region and offer an opportunity for the whole class to come for laboratory work.’

Press release, 4 May 2021

Photo by the Office of the Seimas

In response to the comments by the social democrat Gintautas Paluckas, MP who terms the Millennium Schools proposed by the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats as an evil, Ms Andrikienė said the following:

‘The Opposition’s fears about elitism are groundless because, instead of carrying out the selection of pupils, the Millennium Schools (upper secondary) would make their infrastructure available for pupils of all schools in the region and offer an opportunity for the whole classes to come for laboratory work.

The Programme of the Government describes Millennium Schools as new generation schools that would help bridge the gap between education outcomes in urban schools and regional schools. The Millennium Schools would bring the infrastructure, which is now available only in cities, closer to schoolchildren living in remote municipalities. Millennium Schools would serve as a catalyst for change and accommodate children from the whole region for laboratory work and non-formal education.

My colleague Paluckas is completely right to draw on the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and its fundamental principles when stating that all children are equal and deserve equally good education. However, he forgets to say that our reality is, unfortunately, different.

Mr Paluckas should be more down to earth. It is already now that we have ordinary and elite schools, ‘knowledge islands’, and large gaps not only between private and public schools but also among public schools. All these things are our reality. Ms Austėja Landsbergienė, who is referred to by my social democrat colleague in his commentary, has nothing to do with this. What we have now is the legacy of previous governments and a complete failure to meet the quality requirements for future schools. We are well aware that schools in large cities and remote regions show great differences in the quality of education, and therefore the achievements of their pupils vary considerably. This situation cannot continue. There is a need for a serious reform of the school network with the aim of introducing Millennium Schools as one of the fundamental pillars in the education sector.

That is why, having assessed the state of affairs in the education system and schools, the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats included, into its parliamentary election platform last year and in the Programme of the coalition Government following the elections, the proposal to establish Millennium Schools as the centres of regional schools and to staff them with the teachers demonstrating the highest level of proficiency in achieving education outcomes and the most talented graduates of pedagogical studies. Millennium Schools will be provided with the necessary modern infrastructure, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) laboratories, etc. Most importantly, schoolchildren from the whole region will come here to get the knowledge they lack at their schools.

Other schools in the region will certainly not suffer because of the emergence of Millennium Schools. Quite the contrary, schoolchildren will acquire new, previously unavailable opportunities guaranteeing full-fledged education and much better educational outcomes.

We all are fully aware of the shortage of teachers and all the more so of the lack of the best-qualified teachers. However, the experience of the pandemic has helped to realise that it is absolutely realistic for the best-qualified teacher of physics working at a Millennium School to teach, for example, the subject remotely to a much larger number of schoolchildren than a single classroom could ever accommodate.’

Aldona Drėgvaitė, e-mail: [email protected].