A meeting of the Council for Education Cooperation of the Commonwealth of Independent States Member States was held in Moscow on November 20.
Representatives from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and the CIS Executive Committee attended the meeting.
Participants:
- Summarized the Council’s activities over the past year;
- Defined future directions for cooperation;
- Discussed development prospects for basic organizations in environmental education, professional retraining and advanced training in new areas of technology and engineering development, as well as personnel training, professional development and retraining in agricultural education.
The Council reviewed the progress in implementing the 2020-2030 Action Plan for coordinating CIS countries’ activities in achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4. Positive assessment was given to the contribution of sectoral ministries in implementing a set of measures contributing to SDG 4, which focuses on ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities.
Representatives of Commonwealth education authorities summarized the first year of implementing the Concept for Ensuring the Quality of Professional Education of CIS Member States, approved the initiative to develop a draft Concept for Creating and Developing an International Network of Centers of Excellence in Vocational Education and Training, and discussed issues of education quality assurance, and certification of scientific and academic teaching staff.
Council members approved:
- The draft Program for Implementing the Concept of Forming a Unified (Common) Educational Space of the Commonwealth of Independent States for the period 2027-2035. Following expert review, the document will be submitted through established procedures for consideration by the CIS Heads of Government Council.
- The Concept for the 9th Congress of Teachers and Education Workers of CIS Member States, scheduled for October 2026 in Minsk. The Council determined organizational matters for preparing the Congress and the 4th International Festival of Pedagogical Excellence.
- The initiative to grant the Russian Institute of Contemporary Arts the status of a basic organization for training personnel for creative industries based on arts, modern media, design, and digital content production. To this end, a decision was made to establish a corresponding Working Group.
- The Belarusian side’s initiative to develop draft Strategy for Developing Cooperation among CIS Member States in Implementing the Principle of Inclusion in Education and a Roadmap for its implementation, and supported the proposal to hold a Forum of Higher Education Teachers in Russia in 2026.
The book “Peoples of the Soviet Union and the Great Victory. 1941-1945”, published under the auspices of the International Association (Commission) of Historians and Archivists of the CIS Member States, was presented. This collective work has been recommended to ministries for use in the educational process.
The next meeting of the Council for Education Cooperation of the CIS Member States is scheduled for 2026 in Tajikistan.