Dear Teachers,

Keti Chankseliani, a teacher of the Rustavi Public school and the chairperson of the ESFTUG primary organization in the 24th Rustavi public school, is the first swallow who started public discussions and she expressed initiatives regarding the education system reform. I address to Keti Chankseliani and all the teachers: in recent period, my two statements about ESFTUG approach and personally my position were publishes related to the educational reforms and you probably got acquainted and you are aware of my position. As mentioned in my previous statements, unfortunately, the fragmented statements made by the Minister of Education concerning the proposed reforms at this stage do not allow us to take into consideration every subject matter.

I hope everybody will have an opportunity to take an active part in the discussions and express our positions, deficiencies in proposed fragmented reforms and the needs of teachers. In other cases, ESFTUG will be firm enough against the principles that affect, social, economic, legal and professional rights of teachers.

Unfortunately, the violation of teachers’ rights are obvious: one of the example is as follows: the normative act - "Scheme of initiating the teacher's activity, professional development and career advancement" has been suspended unofficially. Teachers are especially affected, especially those “senior teachers” who have accumulated enough credits and have one mandatory activity-outdoor surveillance to gain the status of ,,leader teacher”. The Ministry of Education did not announce external observation and tens of teachers are responsible for the implementation of this activity. We have already addressed the Minister of Education and we are waiting the response.

I agree with you that the endless reforms associated with the changes of the ministries did not give us the desired results and created an unsustainable, unstable environment in the general education system. Instead of raising professional development and education quality, teachers have lost hope, motivation and stimulus in the future.

Our goal is to create a model that will focus on radically improving the quality of teaching and learning and assess the professionalism of each teacher, taking into consideration all aspects of the teacher's profession.

In one word, we will have a lot of struggles and efforts to ensure that the government is committed to reform, first of all, raising the quality of teaching and teaching and the objective assessment of each teachers’ work or results.

We expect teachers’ commitments.

Respectively,

Maia Kobakhidze, ESFTUG President

25 January 2019