Latvia prepares a new National Strategy for Lifelong Learning

Latvia is preparing a new national strategy for lifelong learning to be implemented beginning in  2013. The country will host the ASEM Meeting for Ministers of Education in 2015, during Latvian EU- Presidency. One of four priorities for the ASEM Education cooperation is lifelong learning.  Mr. Dmitrij Kulss of the Latvian Ministry of Education is co-chair of the Advisory board of the ASEM Research and Education Hub for lifelong learning. The University of Latvia has one of the still few Doctoral Schools of LLL in the world although the country has suffered from the current financial crisis more severely than most other European countries.

At a seminar of the Parliament’s Education Committee on 27 March, UIL’s director Arne Carlsen made a presentation on “Lifelong Learning: contemporary theoretical and practical questions in relation to how UNESCO understands lifelong learning and what UIL will do to promote LLL”. The  discussion afterwards  focussed mainly on LLL in relation to emigration, to youth employment, and to value-based non-formal learning in civil society organisations.

In a meeting with the Secretary-General of Latvia’s National Commission to UNESCO, Ms. Dagnija Baltina, the work of the National Commission was presented with a focus on non-formal education in libraries and story-telling.  Experience shows that this first contact with non-formal education often led to formal studies.

On this occasion, Arne Carlsen lectured for 25 PhD supervisors and students in the Doctoral Programme at the University of Latvia. He focussed  on the sector-wide approach and how it can be dealt with in research, data-collection and statistics concerning lifelong learning