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Tamar Kekenadze - Third Force

To improve the quality of education, public schools and kindergartens must become free from political pressure and have decentralized governance and financial administration. It's impossible to have quality education when a preschool teacher earns less than Georgia's minimum subsistence salary of 220 lari. The wages of preschool teachers, who are responsible for taking care of hundreds of children, have only increased by fifteen to twenty percent over the last eight years.

 

We propose a voucher system for funding preschool education. In this system, state funding would be allocated on a per-child basis and parents would decide that money's fate. This approach would support small and medium-sized businesses, increase the quality of education, spur competition, and most importantly, address the problem of accessibility and the deficit of available spots in preschools.

 

Depoliticizing schools and improving the quality of education would only be possible in an environment where students, parents, and teachers were able to select the school principal through direct and transparent elections. Directly elected education professionals in leadership positions would be accountable to their students, parents, and teachers and not to a political elite whose only concern is to maintain power and exert pressure ahead of each election.    

 

Youth centers, media libraries, and access to modern technologies is an integral part of our platform.

 

Schools must be open to new ideas. Free from political pressure, schools would be eager to discuss governance and policy issues. Teaching politics and civic education would become a priority. A teacher free from political pressure is essential to raising a good citizen, which is one of the primary functions of secondary education. Teachers should never be punished for their political preferences - they should be free in their political beliefs and able to express those beliefs as they see fit. Schools are responsible for raising independent, responsible citizens, a task which would be impossible without free-minded teachers with diverse political views.

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