Justice Minister Ewelina Dobrowolska says that politicians should avoid populism in discussing ethnic minority education, amid proposals to scrap Russian-language education in Lithuania.
“If we talk about ethnic minority schools, whether Russian or Polish, there are challenges in terms of quality, exam performance, enrolment, and teaching the Lithuanian language,” Dobrowolska told the radio Žinių Radijas on Thursday.
“I do wish there was no populism and I’d very much like to see education experts sitting down and discussing how to help our citizens,” she added.
The minister said that both national and international student achievement surveys indicate poorer results in minority schools, as well as regional divides, but addressing these problems requires a “strategic vision” rather than just “saying that we are replacing the schools of one ethnic minority with schools in a different language”.
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She also noted that minority issues are usually brought into the spotlight in election years to mobilise voters.
Education Minister Gintautas Jakštas reopened the debate on Russian-language schools last week, suggesting that Lithuania should follow the example of Estonia and Latvia in abandoning Russian-language education. He said that schools instructing in other minority languages can stay as long as these are official EU languages or those of countries “friendly to Lithuania”.
His comments came in the wake of an incident at Russian school in Vilnius where teenagers fired a pneumatic gun at their schoolmate due to disagreements over the war in Ukraine.
The Education Ministry now plans to prepare a proposal on phasing out Russian-language education.
Meanwhile, the Department of National Minorities has criticised the proposal, saying it would do more harm and “destroy the structure of a multiethnic society that has been built over three decades”.
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