In July this year, a Memorandum of cooperation for providing an efficient and effective data exchange for identifying school-aged children was signed by six institutions: Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, Ministry of Local Self Government, State Education Inspectorate and Office for Management of Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths.
The Memorandum aims at increasing the coverage of children in schools through an efficient, effective and secure exchange of data for the school-aged children between the institutions on a central level, the municipalities and schools.
The process of drafting and signing the Memorandum of cooperation was supported by the project “Inclusion of out-of-school children in the education system”, implemented by MCEC in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Science with the support of the Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation from Switzerland.
This initiative represents an answer to the findings of the research “Inclusion of out-of-school children” that was conducted in 12 municipalities across the country in 2017, in which it was identified that the data in the lists that the municipalities and schools receive for school-aged children often aren’t updated. This makes it harder for the schools to identify and enroll school-aged children in primary education. Due to the non-compliance of the data from schools regarding the children who aren’t enrolled, and the situation on the field, it was identified that a significant number of children whose data was in the schools weren’t on the provided addresses and there were many children that didn’t even exist in the school records.
As a result of the Memorandum coming to force and the defined responsibilities of each institution that signed it, it is expected that the updating of the data for school-aged children is going to be improved and consequently, the coverage rate of children in primary education to be increased.
This activity is part of the Project for Inclusion of Out-of-School Children in the Educational System, supported by the Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation (PCF), in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science.
