Transforming education in Eastern Partnership countries: A day with Timo Kuusela

Timo Kuusela, ETF regional coordinator for Eastern Partnership countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia) has been working at the ETF for almost 30 years. In that time he has both witnessed, and been instrumental in, the transformation of the educational sectors in those former Soviet republics.

Kuusela worked for 10 years in Russia before becoming a country liaison for Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus (with which, however, relations are now on hold). 

“In all the countries of the former Soviet Union,” he says, “there was this legacy of a planned economy. Then they slowly had to start adapting to a market economy. That meant they couldn’t design education policies in isolation within ministries, but had to talk to employers, to providers and so on…”

Those early, post-Soviet years were challenging: 

“Our contacts were so limited, we only really knew the ministries of labour and education. Often we didn’t have any contacts with employers, with social partners, and we did not know what the other international organisations were doing. We didn’t really know what was going on in the country. It was a big limitation…”

Even working with government ministries was far from straight-forward: 

“It was very difficult to start anything new. They were slow to react to anything and if you sent a letter or an email in English, you never heard back…”

So Kuusela, a fluent Russian speaker, began working in a different way. Posted to Ukraine in 2006–07, he based himself in the EU Delegation. 

“I asked colleagues: ‘Where do I go, who should I meet? Where do I find employers?’” 

He started to work with the World Bank and other international organisations, with experts, think-tanks, and civil society organisations.

“In Ukraine there was a growing, industrialised economy, and employers started talking about the skills shortages and their concern about the decreasing enrolment of young people in vocational education and training [VET]. But they didn’t have much knowledge about what they could do other than blame and complain…”

Having established widespread contacts, Kuusela began exploring practical solutions. 

“We started talking about how employers can change the situation. A qualification framework – listing what skills and competences the workforce should have to do the jobs – was established with all key stakeholders involved. We started developing occupational standards around the kinds of tasks and functions that a qualified worker should do. We trained them in how you can develop these standards and how to transform them into educational processes…”

Although each country presented its own set of challenges, Kuusela maintains that there were often comparable issues in each: 

“One area was policy monitoring and analysis: the capacities of people in ministries to understand data was limited, so they often didn’t know how to use evidence to create evidence-informed policies. It still remains a big issue for many countries.”

"There were issues around the professional development of teachers too: what qualifications they should have, whether they were continuously learning something new, something valid for modern needs,” adds Kuusela.

Another issue frequently raised was the optimisation of the schools networks and infrastructures.

“These Republics had inherited a large network of schools and VET institutions, but because of demographic decline and shifting demand for vocations and careers, they struggled to maintain them. It’s a politically difficult topic and what we were trying to urge was not to close everything at the cost of reducing quality and saving money…”

According to Kuusela, being a country coordinator requires an unusual skill-set itself. 

“You need diplomatic skills of course, because we work with governments, meeting ministers at the very highest levels, we work with policy-makers, deputy-ministers, directors of departments, often for a long period of time…”

But listening is also a vital ingredient of the job: 

“It’s uber-important. Before we jump into something, we need to hear their own assessment of what the issues are, to ask: ‘What’s the problem? Why is it not working?’” he says.

Teamwork too is an integral component of Kuusela's work. 

“We have a lot of in-house expertise,” he says. "We work in teams, so you talk to colleagues, you ask them what might be done. The role is often about facilitating – bringing people together, putting the problem on the table, bringing experiences from other countries and listening to different ways of dealing with topics.”

A deep knowledge of a specific country is another requisite for the role. 

“Every new person who comes to the ETF is expected to take responsibility for a particular country. You might know educational or other thematic issues, but the added value is that you can contextualise your knowledge in a country, analysing its problems and suggesting changes that make sense according to that country’s resources and possibilities…”

“It’s important to read wha's published on that country, all the different analytical papers and reports, so as to have a good overview on the situation before you go there, and so you don’t ask trivial questions.”

The longevity of a posting is important, says Kuusela. 

“Ideally, if someone is assigned to work in a country they should remain for a few years. That way you build personal contacts with people, they know who you are, they can trust you and trust that what you say you will follow up on…”

“The other aspect is sustainability. You have to avoid the trap that if you don’t keep supporting the country the reforms will collapse. One has to engage the government and decision-makers in order to find a way that whatever is initiated and supported in these programmes can have an ongoing arc independent of follow-up funding.”

Kuusela is now managing a major new EU programme – Supporting Education Reforms and Skills in the Eastern Partnership Region – starting with a diagnostic assessment of the education systems. The three-year, €2.5 million programme will investigate key reform areas in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, and identify the areas where the EU might support them with funding.

“We have a methodology," says Kuusela, “that covers the entire system, from pre-school to higher education. This Rapid Education Diagnosis methodology looks at specific aspects. The first is what and where are inequalities. Then, how is education financed and how is it distributed (Are priorities resourced efficiently? What is the autonomy to use the funds? Is there enough money to do what they’re supposed to do or is it wishful-thinking?).”

The third aspect under analysis is governance: 

“What are the structures in the country, what agencies are there and what is their role and capacity? Is there engagement with stakeholders and how do, for example, parents participate?”

The result will be an analytical paper that looks at all these dimensions in the short, medium and long term. 

According to Kuusela, there will be “action-orientated recommendations. Not something generic, but concrete and hands-on suggestions which the countries can implement.”

The assessments have already begun in Armenia, Georgia and Moldova. The ongoing invasion of Ukraine is complicating the analysis there, which might be conducted later "when the situation allows us to do so,” says Kuusela.

“Ukraine, like Moldova and Georgia, feels it’s part of Europe, it has European aspirations and has been granted candidate status, so it’s natural that it should want to align its systems and economy so that it will one day be eligible. Education is a key part of that: they want to learn what’s going on so that they can raise the bar higher and provide the same level of quality education of EU member states.”