Today, President of Latvia Egils Levits met with Minister for Education and Science Anda Čakša at the Riga Castle to discuss state support for higher education and research and strengthening of status of Latvian language as the official language, collective memory and democratic awareness.
Current and future quality of higher education and research was the main topic of the meeting. President Levits underlined the need to integrate all Latvian higher education institutions into a single ecosystem, and thus raise the international competitiveness of higher education in Latvia.
President Levits underlined that he has repeatedly urged the government to increase state support for higher education and research, and Cabinet should take the necessary steps in the coming years. According to Minister Čakša, the government’s action plan envisages doubling of public investments into research, development and innovations by 2026. Government should also increase base funding for research to 50% of total research, development and innovation budget in the next couple of years to make sure research institutes have a steady flow of funding and basis for attracting and developing academic and research personnel, Egils Levits added.
President Levits called for more funding for academic publications of research universities, which would increase the supply of academic publications, especially in human and social sciences, and get them included in international databases.
President of Latvia encouraged Minister Čakša to consider a new education institution – National Collective Memory and Democratic Awareness Institute. ‘Its main task would be to communicate history and constitutional values of the Latvian State to target groups in Latvia and abroad. Such institute would also strengthen national pride and values of Latvia as a modern, democratic, national and European state,’ President Levits said. Both officials also talked about the review of school history programmes to promote a better understanding of the national history of Latvia, an idea repeatedly reiterated by participants of the discussion ‘History lessons: study plan and impact on constitutional values awareness’ that took place at the Riga Castle today.
President Levits said government should come up with precise steps to strengthen the status of the Latvian language as the official language nationally, for example, by offering additional incentives to teachers of Latvian. Minister Čakša noted that Ministry is already looking into several possibilities for increasing the interest about this profession among future students. Egils Levits proposed to establish a new tradition on 15 October, the Official Language Day – a special parliamentary report on the status of official language and planned steps to strengthen it by line ministers (education, science and culture) who are responsible for the Latvian language.
President of Latvia and Education and Science Minister then discussed ways of increasing the number of teachers of EU languages and natural sciences in Latvian schools.
President Levits informed about his plans to host the next regular ‘Computer for Every Child’ memorandum council meeting soon to discuss further steps of the initiative in promoting access to computers and computer skills among schoolchildren. Minister Čakša told that first batch of computers has recently reached regional municipalities and Ministry of Education and Science is currently working on future steps of the initiative.
