Training on data management and evidence-informed policy making, organised within the Quality Assurance (QA) component of the Enhancements in the quality of education and training in SEE – EQET SEE project, took place on 12 and 13 April 2022 in Podgorica, Montenegro.

More than thirty relevant stakeholders from quality assurance agencies and ministries of education of the seven economies (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia) attended the meeting, hosted by the ERI SEE Secretariat, along the representatives of the project strategic partner European Training Foundation (ETF), international experts on quality assurance and data management and ERI SEE representatives.

The Training on data management and evidence-informed policy making was organised with goals of enhancing the process of data collection, analysis and use in the external evaluation process and facilitating experience exchange between policy makers and quality assurance experts from the South Eastern Europe economies and Moldova.

The meeting was opened by Ms Tina Šarić, ERI SEE director and EQET SEE Project Manager, Ms Biljana Joksimović, Director of the Bureau for Education Services in Montenegro and Mr Duško Rajković, Director of the VET Centre in Montenegro, while on behalf of the ETF, Mr Mounir Baati, Senior Human Capital Development Expert, addressed the participants.

Dutch experts: Mr Maarten Balvers from the Dutch Education Inspectorate, Mr Tim Schokker from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and Mr Herman Franssen, expert presented experiences from the Netherlands and tackled the topics of types of data being collected, methods of their collection and analysis, and goals of data collection and their use for policy making.

The participants from the SEE and Moldova also reflected and exchanged information on practices used in their economies related to types of data collected before and during the external evaluation or annually, the use of this data, practices of thematic evaluation, methods and tools used to gather, maintain and analyse the data, and discussed what improvements could be made in respective economies and how the regional cooperation could contribute to them.

Presentations:

• Data Management – A Dutch Example by Maarten Balvers, Herman Franssen and Tim Schokker
• Strategic Evaluation as Practice embedding evaluation in policy – Tim Schokker

* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status and is in line with UNCSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.