Simplification of the procedures for verification of non-formal education programs and verification of the institutions that provide such programs is the main requirement of the organizations that participated in the meeting on the topic “The role of civil society organisations in providing high-quality non-formal education”. The meeting was held on 27th May in the Civil Society Resource Center at the initiative of the organisation Educational Cultural Center “Nana”.
Organisations shared their experiences from attempts to verify training programs, but they confirmed that these procedures are complex and time-consuming. Some of the challenges are the poor informing of the organisations about the processes and policies of non-formal education, as well as the insufficient openness of the institutions towards the associations as a serious providers of non-formal education.
Biljana Mojsovska Manojlova, from the Lifelong Learning Center and a member of the Coordinative body for monitoring the measure “Establishing a system for validation of informal and non-formal learning” from the Education Strategy 2018-2025, informed that the establishment of a validation system is a top priority in the period 2018-2020, which implies that the individual should be at the center of the learning and his/her knowledge, skills and competences should be recognized, regardless of the conditions in which the individual has acquired them. She added that CSOs can become service providers in some of the four stages of validation and can also serve as information centers.
In line with the Law, CSOs have no obligation to complete the entire verification process, but it is left to the trainers to fight on the market in order to be recognized by potential trainees. An additional challenge is the provision and the guarantee of the quality of the trainings.
In the next period, the Civil Society Resource Center will organise a meeting with the Center for Adult Education, and on the basis of the findings it will evaluate whether there is a need for providing additional support and organising a debate or an information event on this topic.
