From November 30 to December 4, 2015 Ukrainian delegation, with the Chairperson of the Committee on Science and Education Liliya Hrynevych in its composition, is on familiarization study visit to the Kingdom of Sweden in the framework of the Swedish-Ukrainian Project "Support to Decentralization in Ukraine."
The purpose of the working visit is to familiarize Ukrainian specialists with best practices of functioning of the decentralized system of general secondary education; educational indicators; tools for collecting, processing and techniques of analyzing statistical data used for management and financing of the education system.
In the first days of the visit the participants familiarized themselves with local government bodies of Sweden, decentralized education system, use of statistical data for policy development and decision-making, and also learned about the structure and functions of local government bodies in Sweden, listened to a brief history of decentralization process in Sweden, got acquainted with duties of local government bodies, mechanisms of autonomy / monitoring and financing, and the role of SKL.
According to the Chairperson of the Committee, the Swedish model and the system of education decentralization had followed its own interesting path of development. Swedish colleagues talked about best practices of reforms in education; authorities of central and local government bodies, schools; about ways of education monitoring and management; relationship of local government bodies and schools and the system of policy development on the basis of actual data and the role of statistics in this process.
Later on, at the Statistics Sweden the delegation had the opportunity to listen to the report on use of statistical data in policy development and decision-making in Sweden, namely: how the data are used in policy development in Sweden, and on requests of central and local government bodies for the data: what do they want to know and why.
According to Liliya Hrynevych, highly valuable was a workshop on calculation and analysis of indicators in the field of education and discussion about responsibility for efficiency indicators in Sweden, and deductions and presentation of efficiency indicators.
On Wednesday, the delegation was engaged in studying the system of financing of the decentralized education in Sweden, funding of tasks in education by local government bodies in Sweden, the role of national government bodies, the system of subventions from the state budget and formulas of their distribution. The participants listened to the report about statistical data on education, which are used for analytical purposes in Sweden, the system of data collection with a focus on education, the process of collecting data on education at the Swedish Higher Education Authority and the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education. Experts from the Swedish Schools Inspectorate talked about monitoring over and control of schools (complaints, regular monitoring, license quality audits, and applications).
Visit to a school and meeting with the director and teachers, discussion of the tools and use of data for tracking efficiency at school inspired the delegation to new ideas, and participation in the workshop on data collection and their use in specific local government bodies enriched with new knowledge and skills necessary for future work on the reform in Ukraine. At the end of the visit, the participants will familiarize themselves with the Municipality of Sollentuna with an emphasis on education: organization of education at the local level, the role of local politicians, executive committees in municipalities, and school directors.