Montenegro officially declared its independence in 2006. Montenegro has about 623 000 of inhabitants. In November 2010, Montenegro was accepted as a candidate to begin negotiations for European Union (EU) membership. Moving closer to EU accession, Montenegro will need to significantly increase its competitiveness and review its policies with regard to employment, skills development and technological innovation and absorption.
As the education is a key factor of the society development reforms in this area in Montenegro are continuously implementing reforms, in order to make educational system recognized by its compliance with modern trends and quality in the Region and wider. In recent years, reforms have been implemented in all levels of education. Reform was preceded by a legislative amendments and changes for the appropriate level of education, and its harmonization with EU legislation.
Our future trends and efforts in education area will relate to the following:
1. Further development of social partnership and active involvement of partners in planning, organization and implementation of education and training, thus providing faster response to the labour market needs.
2. The improvements of flexibility of VET through development of modularized curricula based on vocational and key competences, which ensure wide basic vocational knowledge and which, by the means of elective modules, satisfy special interests and affinities of pupils.
3. The development of indicators for institution quality assessment, defining procedures for curricula evaluation, as well as the evaluation itself, will contribute to the improvement of quality of education.
4. Early school leaving prevention, taking into account its complexity and influence on individuals and society in general. Develop career guidance system for all types of education.
5. The improvement of initial and continuing professional training of teaching staff has been recognized as a key factor of education quality. Special attention will be dedicated to the education of teachers of practical training.
6. Finding out the way to involve local community representatives and employers in the financing of education to the possible extent, which should encourage better cooperation between school and local community. Preparation for the implementation of a model of financing per capita, which would ensure more efficient expenditures, with greater autonomy of both school and local community. Developing role of school will be encouraged.
7. One of the priorities in the upcoming period has been defining of enrolment policy which will reflect labour market needs as well as Montenegrin mid-term and long-term development policy requirements, along with further work on the creation of relevant working conditions at schools, school equipment and teaching aids upgrading and development of textbooks and relevant learning materials.
8. International context will be taken into account in the envisaged activities.
9. Linking higher education and labour market and increasing entrepreneurial and innovation character of education,
10. The share of population with higher education degrees aged 30-34 should be at least 40% in 2020,
11. Establishing a model of lifelong learning based on a good international practice,
12. Research oriented higher education,
13. The establishment of the National Qualification Framework will ensure quality of qualifications, and connection and comparability of the outcomes, achieved through different learning types.
All information about Montenegro can be found at the newly created web site www.me