The Ministry of Education and Science, in collaboration with Tomo Center for Creative Technologies, on Saturday announced the launch of a special platform to consider new generation reforms.

The initiative aims to foster national debates over the future of Armenia’s education, as well as develop a special project proposing renewed approaches to its development and implementation, said Marie Lou Papazian, the managing director of Tumo.

In her speech at the opening event, she also stressed the importance of elaborating a special package to assist in future development projects.

“We should not be satisfied only with the reforms. It is also important to move to building a system which will be considered the most developed in the world. We have three clearly outlined objectives to work on in the six months to come,” she said.

“The first thing to do is to collect all the resources, programs and ideas potentially promoting reforms in education. Second, [we need] to create our vision for guiding those reforms, and third – develop a timeline to get the reforms underway,” Papazian added.

Highly appreciating the initiative, Minister of Education and Science Arayik Harutyunyan highlighted an increasing interest in education (in the past couple of weeks), considering it an important stimulus.

“It is important in the sense that the new government [which came to power] after the [velvet] revolution is planning reforms in these particular areas in collaboration with specialists. That’s something we do really need to introduce good concepts into education,” he said, requesting the attendees to concentrate serious efforts on possible solutions.

The minister said he also managed to address the urgent and pressing problems over the past weeks (since taking office), undertaking strategic and tactical steps to tackle the existing challenges.

He said that the reforms should be comprehensive to offer innovative ideas and approaches on practically all the levels of education (from pre-school institutions to universities). “We need a closer study in the field of vocational education where we are facing numerous problems. Their solution would help build bridges between the labor market and the innovative trends,” he added.

The minister further emphasized the urgent need of de-politicizing universities and revising the distribution of resources. In his words, the Ministry of Education and Science made “quite unreasonable expenses” in the past years. “Certain expenses were made in the wake of special [telephone] calls by the legislative body. They amount to hundreds of millions,” he added.