International Institute for Education Policy Planning and Management (EPPM) participates in an international project – “Integrity of education systems: training for civil society organisations”. The project is co-led by Network of Education Policy Centers (NEPC) and Center for Applied Policy and Integrity (CAPI). The duration of the project is one year. Along with EPPM three other organizations participate in the project.

The aim of the project is to investigate risks of corruption in education and solutions in countries of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region in order to create the conditions for replicating expertise and locally-led integrity assessments in the region. The assessment is based on the INTES methodology and evidence collection tools developed by CAPI within the framework of the OECD Anti-Corruption Network for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

The desirable outcome of the project is to help the countries to discern how to tackle the corruption challenge by empowering education participants and stakeholders and to understand and address their integrity challenges “from within” their education institutions and professional environments.

As mentioned above, the project will be implemented through an operational and research partnership between the NEPC and CAPI that will unfold in four phases: training; collection of evidence; analysis and reporting; dissemination of results.

The first phase of the project – training took place in Belgrade, Serbia. Representatives of all four organizations attended the training. The training provided a hands-on guidance on how to carry out integrity assessments and collect primary evidence on the participation of education stakeholders in integrity violations, the systemic conditions in which these violations take place and on how to analyse this evidence for policy and/or research purposes.