Lithuania has achieved steady expansion of participation in education, substantially widening access to early childhood education and care and tertiary education, coupling this with nearly universal participation in secondary education. However, its education system faces a number of challenges. Educational achievement among its secondary students trails the OECD average, and gaps in achievement persist between urban and rural students. Swift population decline has placed pressure on its network of higher education institutions. As a consequence, its higher education system has an exceptionally large number of institutions that, taken together, perform well below OECD averages in internationalisation, research activity, and support for innovation. If Lithuania’s education system is to help the nation respond effectively to its economic opportunities and demographic challenges, improvements in the performance of its schools and its higher education institutions are needed.

Since the restoration of its independence in 1991, Lithuania has established a reformed and inclusive education system. Policy makers have decentralised to local governments responsibility to organise and supervise schooling, created transparent arrangements for funding schools, and provided school heads and higher education leaders with wide responsibility for the management of their institutions. Participation in schooling is effectively universal to the end of upper secondary education, and the level of participation in tertiary education is well above EU and OECD averages. Lithuania’s accomplishments in the past quarter century are considerable. However, improvements in the quality of schooling and higher education are needed to effectively address the nation’s demographic challenges and respond to its economic opportunities.

Since the restoration of independence in 1991, Lithuania has succeeded in establishing a reformed and inclusive education system. Policy makers have decentralised responsibility to local governments to organise and supervise schooling, created distinctively transparent arrangements for funding schools, and provided school heads and higher education leaders with wide responsibility for the management of their institutions. Participation in schooling is effectively universal to the end of upper secondary education, and the level of participation in tertiary education is well above both EU and OECD averages. The nation’s education system has emphasised the development of a democratic citizenry fitted for the exercise of self-government and the sustenance of Lithuanian national identity while accommodating ethnic and linguistic diversity. Following Lithuania’s accession to EU membership in 2004 this work has been importantly assisted by extensive EU financial assistance.

This chapter introduces the main features and trends in Lithuanian education, and examines the overarching challenges facing the education system. Faced with challenges of episodic economic growth and population decline, the nation’s education system can support demographic stabilisation, social cohesion, and economic growth. To do this, the nation’s education system – which has achieved wide scope – must place special emphasis on raising educational quality. This will require that its schools and its higher education institutions perform at a higher level than in the past, developing the language, scientific, and mathematical fluency of its young adults to a high level; training innovative and skilled professionals for working life; carrying out research rooted in European and international engagement, and which meets international standards. The chapter concludes by outlining four strategic, systemic steps that policy makers might take to address these challenges.

The importance of early childhood education and care (ECEC) is well recognised in Lithuania. Its professional community shares a tradition of concern with the structural dimensions of ECEC quality – ensuring adequate space, group sizes, staffing, facilities, and hygiene – and it has developed a widely shared understanding of the essential cognitive, emotional and social skills that children need to develop in their early years. Levels of participation in ECEC are high, especially in urban areas. However, participation in ECEC lags in the nation’s rural areas, where the incidence of poverty and ill health are highest, and young children might benefit most from access to high quality ECEC. Responsibility for monitoring the quality of ECEC rests with municipal education departments, who lack ministerial guidance which would permit them to easily and routinely monitor the quality of ECEC provision. This chapter examines how Lithuania might address gaps in participation, and put in place a comprehensive system of quality monitoring.

Nearly all Lithuanian students complete basic education, and achieve on average a level of learning by age 15 that is close to international standards. These results are accomplished by teachers and school leaders who are accorded wide autonomy, and on the basis of comparatively modest levels of spending. However, there are important challenges facing primary and lower secondary schooling in Lithuania. A declining school-age population makes it difficult for authorities to efficiently manage the nation’s school network. The nation’s capacity to renew its teaching workforce is hampered by unattractive conditions of employment, an unsettled vision of what good teaching is, and what sort of education can best prepare good teachers. The nation’s 15-year-old students are less successful in using and applying knowledge than are students in the bestperforming regional peer countries, and wide and persistent gaps exist between rural and urban students. This chapter examines each of these challenges, and identifies policy options that might be adopted to mitigate inequities and raise performance across the board.

Lithuania has achieved a very high level of attainment in upper secondary education, with more than nine in ten of today’s young Lithuanians forecasted to complete their upper secondary education over their lifetime. Even so, there is scope for improvement. Upper secondary vocational education has struggled to increase its attractiveness to learners, and to provide them strong labour market outcomes. Upper secondary general education has permitted graduates to successfully continue their studies at the tertiary level. However, the matura examination, a high-stakes school leaving and higher education entry examination, creates incentives for teachers and students to focus principally on tested subjects within the upper secondary general education curriculum, and on the accumulation rather than application of knowledge. Moreover, with one high-stakes examination at the end of secondary studies, schools find it challenging to create steady and consistent incentives for learning across the entire course of the secondary studies. This chapter examines these challenges and identifies policy options to boost the attractiveness of the vocational offer and to align the matura examination with the competency-focused intended curriculum.

Lithuania has achieved an especially high level of participation in tertiary education, and its graduates, on average, experience labour market outcomes typical of OECD member countries. This is accomplished with modest levels of per pupil spending, by institutions that operate with substantial autonomy, and within a system of transparent funding driven by student demand. However, the tertiary sector now faces serious challenges. Lithuania’s tertiary institutions are too numerous and small to achieve the levels of efficiency and quality that the nation needs. The university system has not reached a level of satisfactory performance in research and development, and the wider tertiary system has not substantially benefitted from international mobility among students and researchers. This chapter examines these challenges, and provides policy options with respect to urgent questions of system scale and organisation – and longer term challenges of internationalisation and equity facing the tertiary system.