Changing the directors of such schools is not currently planned. For now...
The State Education Quality Service (IKVD) has concluded that ten Riga schools are lagging behind others in the transition to Latvian-language education, reports Latvian Radio. The local government acknowledges that the service's findings were not unexpected and promises to monitor more closely how the transition to Latvian-language education is progressing in these schools.
A few weeks ago, IKVD published a report on the situation regarding the transition to Latvian-language education in national minority schools during the previous academic year. Along with this report, the service prepared letters to local governments where former national minority schools are located. The content of the letters has not been made public, but it is known that in the letter to the capital's authorities, the service pointed out specific schools that are, so to speak, lagging in this transition.
Ivan Janis Mikhailov, Director of the Quality Assurance Department at IKVD, however, refrains from assessing how the capital's transition to Latvian-language education compares to other municipalities in a conversation with Latvian Radio.
"It is difficult to compare Riga, where there are many former national minority schools, with the provinces, where there is only one or two such schools.
In Riga, this transition is not as uniform because there are educational institutions that have actually started this transition with proactive measures and are implementing it quite successfully. There are educational institutions that, for various reasons—objective and subjective—are not doing as well," Mikhailov commented.
Anita Peterkopa, head of the general education schools department at the Riga Department of Education, Culture, and Sports, told Latvian Radio that the IKVD findings were not a surprise for the local government, as her department had been assessing schools even before the service surveyed students, teachers, and parents.
When asked how the transition to Latvian-language education is planned to be improved, Peterkopa said that, for example, there are support centers for the transition to a unified school in Riga, and mentorship has been introduced for those schools that need to improve their transition to Latvian-language education. School visits and lesson observations will continue, involving representatives from both the local government and state structures, such as the Latvian Language Agency. After visiting schools, they are given recommendations.
The ten schools where more problems have been noted are visited more frequently by local government representatives.
Changing the leadership of these schools is not currently planned, but this could be assessed at the end of the academic year. For now, the local government will monitor the situation in these schools while waiting for improvements.
