Project No. LT0009-03-01-0043

Project duration: 18 June 2002– 1 October 2003

Project funder: PHARE 2000 Economic and Social Integration Initiative, Human Resources Development Fund

Project coordinator: Anykščiai Jonas Biliūnas Gymnasium (Lithuania)

Project partners:

Vilnius University Business School (Lithuania)

Lithuanian Junior Achievement (Lithuania)

Šiuolaikinių didaktikų centras (Lithuania)

UAB „Sinchronizacija“

PROJECT RELEVANCE

At a time when the country’s command economy is being replaced by a mixed economy, with priority given to the free market, economic education plays an important role in society. Taking into account market needs and with a view to improving the skills and entrepreneurship of the workforce, compulsory economic education is to be introduced gradually over two years in Lithuanian general education schools from the 2002/2003 academic year. The opportunity to teach economics is planned to be given to specialists in this subject or to teachers of other subjects who have completed special courses.

Currently, only 19 of the 165 general education schools in the Utena district teach economics, and the vast majority of schools are unable to do so due to a lack of properly trained economics teachers.

Data from the Lithuanian Department of Statistics at the beginning of 2002 show that the demographic situation in the Utena region is one of the most problematic in the country: the birth rate in the region is steadily declining, which will have an impact on the number of students in general education schools in the near future. At the same time, many women in the Utena district, who currently make up 85.8% of all teachers working in the district, may be left without work. The number of teaching jobs in the Utena region has fallen by 1,124 over the last five years, while unemployment in the county has risen from 7% to 10.5% over the same period. This means that women remain one of the most vulnerable categories of the workforce.

PROJECT AIMS

• Promote human resource development in order to reduce the economic development gap between the target region of Utena and the Lithuanian average.
• Increase employment in the target region.
• Facilitate the adaptation of the workforce to changing conditions in the labor market.
• Ensure that the local labor market better meets local and regional needs.
• Improve the skills and entrepreneurship of the workforce.
• Strengthen vocational training, increase the number of people trained, and improve the quality of training in order to improve the adaptation of vocational training and labor market training institutions in the region to market conditions.
• Create better conditions for the employment of young people, women, and other groups in society that find it more difficult to integrate into the labor market.
• Promote and strengthen partnerships at the local level.
  

PROJECT TARGET GROUPS

• unemployed young people under the age of 25 with higher education in economics or pedagogy;
• teachers of working age who may lose their jobs in the near future due to changes in the education system.

The project aimed to encourage entrepreneurship among these groups, provide them with the opportunity to gain new qualifications, and start a promising career as an economics teacher.

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

Partners participation in the project

• Anykščiai Jonas Biliūnas Gymnasium – organisation and coordination of project activities.
• Vilnius University Business School – presentation of economic fundamentals to seminar participants, introduction to Lithuanian economic development trends.
• Šiuolaikinių didaktikų centras – introducing seminar participants to key issues in the process of educational change, presenting knowledge of pedagogy and psychology, teaching how to apply modern methods in economics education.
• Lithuanian Junior Achievement – introducing seminar participants to economic education programs developed by their organization and already being implemented in Lithuania, sharing experiences in economic education for schoolchildren and opportunities for using information technology in this field.
• UAB Sinchronizacija – introducing project participants to the use of information technology in business management.

PROJECT RESULTS

• 29 participants from these target groups took part in the project.
• Project participants acquired knowledge of the market economy and skills in working with specific computer programs, and became familiar with modern teaching methods and business organization issues.
• It is expected that project participants will be able to find employment as economics teachers or start their own private businesses.
• The project attracted the attention of the local community and encouraged its representatives to take an interest in project activities and the opportunities they offer for personal development and the strengthening of economic and social cohesion.
• The professional competence of the project partners ensured the high quality of the main project activities and encouraged the Anykščiai region’s teaching community to seek opportunities to develop the cooperation initiated by the project partners.
• The further dissemination of project ideas within the community will aim to create favorable conditions for cooperation between educational institutions and business representatives in the field of economic education for young people in the future.