August 2020 marked the end of an impact evaluation of two priorities, namely ’Promotion of research, experimental development and innovation’ and ’Public education and development of human resource potential’ that have been implemented under 2014-2020 Operational Programme (hereinafter – OP) for the European Union Funds Investments in Lithuania. Initiated by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports of the Republic of Lithuania this evaluation aimed to assess the progress and impact of the abovementioned priorities in areas of education and research, development and innovation within the goals and specific tasks set in the OP.
The evaluation results of the expected impact of EU funds investment within the period of 2014-2020 in the field of education and research demonstrate that planned and implemented interventions mostly address the challenges identified in the Operational Programme, contribute to planned changes and directly feed into monitoring indicators, which have been established at OP level. However, some challenges and aims, reflected in Lithuanian strategic documents, call for additional actions and means to improve the quality and accessibility of education at all levels, as well as science-business cooperation and knowledge commercialisation.
The biggest share of EU investments was made towards infrastructure within both, R&D&I and education, sectors. The main focus was on modernisation and development of infrastructure, provision of necessary equipment, development of systematic preconditions for increasing the quality and accessibility of education, including the establishment of the management, monitoring, and evaluation systems at different educational levels, as well as development and update of educational programmes. The majority of these improvements are still in progress, therefore, the impact of their created products and results will become evident over a longer period. In the meantime, the investments bringing change at institutional, target group, and individual levels were remarkably limited, with a few exceptions of non-formal education funding and public sector researchers' competence building schemes.
You can find the final report (in Lithuanian) here.
