Development of a concept for monitoring & evaluation of inclusive practice in Serbian education system

Development of a concept for monitoring & evaluation of inclusive practice in Serbian education system

Project Description

Getting children from all backgrounds to attend school has been an important issue across the Western Balkans. The challenge has been particularly acute for children from minority and vulnerable families that, in the past, have been purposely excluded, at worst or, less insensitively, just neglected. To apply a more inclusive policy, the Serbian Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) has undertaken a range of activities to establish ways of ensuring additional support for children with disabilities and learning difficulties, and children from families with challenging socio-economic backgrounds.

To ensure real results have been made, the MoES needed to develop and implement a system for regular monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of inclusive practices. In these circumstances, WBIF has provided a grant to design a quality assurance system for monitoring and evaluation of the inclusive education policy. This M&E system can be used to support the daily work of education professionals at the school and municipal levels and also assist with further inclusion-related policies and their implementation.

In particular, technical assistance activities have included:

  • A needs assessment of the current situation related to the work of Inter-Sectoral Commissions at the municipal level;
  • Designing the inclusion-related tools for the relevant institutional actors, such as the MoES and its regional school administrations (pedagogical advisors), the Inter-Sectoral Committees at the municipal level, the Institute of Quality Education and Evaluation, education professionals and other education stakeholders, including the schools;
  • Developing standards and procedures for inclusion-related M&E in regular external and school self-evaluation, which will also involve other relevant institutional actors;
  • Developing the training packages for capacity building of the relevant institutional actors in the education sector at all levels;
  • Piloting the training packages for relevant institutional actors in the education sector; as well as
  • Cross-country learning and knowledge-sharing on M&E of inclusive education.

Partner Financial Organisations

Western Balkans Partners