1. CAECN Capacity Building Workshop

The Central Asian Education Cooperation Network (CAECN) will organize a Capacity Building Workshop in Dushanbe on September 13-15, 2006. The workshop is supported by the Education Support Program (ESP) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The purpose of the workshop is to strengthen the existing network and support its transformation process into a sustainable regional network. The capacity-building event will enable participants to acquire new knowledge and skills for efficient network functioning and develop an action plan to address existing challenges of the network.

Three international trainers will lead training sessions. Participants will include twenty representatives of educational NGOs and international organizations from four Central Asian countries: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The First Deputy Minister and the Head of the State Policy Department at the Ministry of Education of Tajikistan will also attend the workshop.

Participation is by invitation.

More information is available at: www.educasia.net or contact Zarina Derbisheva at: office@sfe.kyrnet.kg

2. Book Learning to Change appears in South Slavic languages

In 2005, Central European University Press published the English-language version of the book Learning to Change: The Experience of Transforming Education in South-East Europe, edited by Terrice Bassler. Now the book will be published in South Slavic languages as the result of collaboration of recognized leaders from NGOs, academia, government service, as well as schools and communities throughout South-East Europe.

The book was developed through the Open Society Institute's education network in the region. It includes a collection of first-person narratives by specialists in education from 11 countries and territories of South-East Europe. They chronicle the profound effect on schooling of armed conflicts, post-communist transition, and the increasing openness of the past 15 years. It also includes basic data on education and chronologies of education reform by country from 1989 to the present.

The initiative to publish the book in South Slavic languages was begun in 2006 in cooperation between Open Society Education Programs South East Europe (OSEP-SEE), the Education Support Program (ESP) and Open Society Foundation (OSF) Bosnia & Herzegovina. The publisher is Buybook, in Sarajevo. The launch of the book is scheduled for October 2006 in Sarajevo. The exact date will be announced later. For more information please contact: dzenana@soros.org.ba

3. Black Sea Conference on University Admission and Exams in Tbilisi, Georgia, September 19-20, 2006

The main aim of this international conference is to bring together experts and political decision makers involved in university admission exams to address political and technical issues, exchange knowledge and experience and discuss solutions for common problems. The conference will play a role in the ongoing debate around admission exams, foster it and contribute to the strengthening of ties between professionals involved in this process. This event will be a unique opportunity for politicians and professionals from the region to exchange opinions and compare experiences with their counterparts from other parts of the world.

The participants will be political decision makers and managers of testing organizations; test developers and psychometricians; and experts responsible for the technical and logistical administrative infrastructure. Participation is by invitation only.

The conference is organized under the auspices of the Georgian Ministry of Education and Science with the support of the World Bank, the Association for Educational Assessment-Europe, the Open Society Institute and Open Society Foundation Georgia. OSI Higher Education Support Program (HESP) financially supports the conference; Education Support Program (ESP) provides conceptual advice.

For more information, please contact: Keti Ebanoidze keti@naec.ge, or Giga Zedania giga@osgf.ge

4. National Roundtable Meetings on Equal Access to Education for Roma

Monitoring Equal Access to Quality Education for Roma is an ongoing project of the OSI-EUMAP initiative (www.eumap.org). The project aims to assess the implementation of government education policies for Roma; to provide data on key education indicators; to promote consultation with Roma communities on education issues; and establish a framework for regular monitoring throughout the Decade of Roma Inclusion. The monitoring activities focus on primary and secondary education (up to age 18), and also assess pre-school education.

The outcome of the project will be the publication of a series of reports covering Roma education in each of the eight countries involved in the Decade of Roma Inclusion (www.romadecade.org) between 2005 and 2015: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia.

Teams of local experts are preparing the country reports, which will contain a set of specific recommendations for national governments, local authorities, intergovernmental bodies and other actors. Each of the reports includes three case studies focusing on local communities.

These reports will be presented at local meetings of stakeholders, who have the opportunity to review the reports, provide new information or highlight new perspectives. The first roundtable meeting took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, on June 20, 2006, where the country report on Bulgaria was presented and reviewed. Similar meetings will take place in the rest of the countries in the coming months. The comments from the stakeholders? meetings will be incorporated into the reports together with other inputs received during the project.

The finalized reports will be published in English and local languages, and will include an overview highlighting main findings and topics across the reports.

This EUMAP monitoring project is carried out in co-operation with the ESP (Education Support Program) and RPP (Roma Participation Program) of the Open Society Institute Budapest.

For more information please click here or contact Katy Negrin, Project Manager at knegrin@osieurope.org

5. International Step by Step Association (ISSA) conference on exclusion and discrimination

The 2006 ISSA conference, "Promoting diversity through education: Eliminating exclusion and challenging discrimination” will be held in Bratislava, Slovakia on October 26-28, 2006. The event provides a forum to present current practices, to explore current and future research trends, and to empower educators, professionals, families and policy makers to promote social inclusion.

Keynote speeches from renowned experts, active workshops and parallel panel sessions will be organized around the following themes:

• Roma and Minority Education;
• Inclusive Education (children with special needs);
• Education for Social Justice (anti-bias education; culture and community in the classroom, second language learning);
• Children living in deprived circumstances (poverty, rural areas, single parent homes);
• Celebration of diversity.