The citizens will be involved in monitoring the quality of education services through the first Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) grant, a World Bank-administered initiative that aims to support reforms in the country’s education sector, IPN reports.

The grant, in the amount of US$696,000, is implemented by the Moldovan independent think-tank EXPERT-GRUP, and focuses on supporting ongoing reforms in the education sector.

The overall objective of this five-year initiative is to empower Moldovan citizens to engage local, regional and national authorities in evidence-based policy and budget dialogue regarding educational reform, quality of educational services, and development priorities of schools.

“GPSA can serve as a fundamental mechanism for involving students, parents, teachers and the whole community in the on-going educational sector reforms. The reform can be better tailored to the local needs only after a broad engagement of the education system’s stakeholders in policy debates, budgeting and setting development priorities at the school level,” said Adrian Lupusor, Executive Director of EXPERT-GRUP. “It is extremely important that the selected 100 schools, which will be involved in this five-year project, will prove to be sufficiently motivated in order to disseminate these experiences and act as champions of change at the local level.”

There will be designed questionnaires on the quality and performance of schools. They will be filled out anonymously by those involved in this process.