The standards for vocational teachers will focus on teacher development, mutual support, and cooperation

Organized by the World Bank and within the framework of the project "Raising the Qualifications of Vocational Education Teachers," a consultative meeting was held, attended by Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Tamar Kitiashvili, Head of the Good Governance Fund (GGF) and British Embassy representative Helen Wichmann, as well as local and international education experts.

During the meeting, World Bank consultants presented the working versions of the vocational teacher standards and career development model documents developed within the project, aimed at public discussion and feedback collection.

Opening the expanded consultative meeting, the Deputy Minister focused on several priorities to be considered in the process of developing the standards and career development, noting that both documents should be focused on teachers' professional development and encourage them toward the perfection of personal and career development. In her welcoming remarks, Tamar Kitiashvili also noted that both the standards and the career development module should encourage the inflow into the vocational education system of, on the one hand, industry practitioner professionals, and on the other hand, young professionals and successful college graduates.

The Deputy Minister placed significant emphasis on understanding the role of the teacher not as a mentor, but as a facilitator, adding that the developed approaches should encourage cooperation, mutual assistance, and collegiality among teachers rather than the pursuit of obtaining a specific status. According to Tamar Kitiashvili, the approaches developed by the project should be comprehensive for teacher activities, while at the same time being easily perceivable by the parties and tailored to the Georgian reality.