CURRENT LITHUANIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM PROBLEMS: SENIOR CLASS PUPILS’ POSITION
Authors: Lamanauskas Vincentas , Railienė Laima 
Published: May 2021

Interest in Lithuanian Education system problems is naturally understandable thing. On the one hand, in the process of constant changes appearing in the education system, it becomes important to know the current situation at every moment in time; on the other hand, it is important, referring to the available information, to be able to model effective changes or to carry out certain prevention measures in the case of undesirable phenomena. Attitude researches in Lithuania have already become an inseparable part of public discourse and are rather popular. An opinion exists that surveys are not a reliable method especially that very often we can guess what the predominant answers of the respondents will be. Such presumptions usually come true. However, even if the research confirms the presumptions it is not bad, because a survey carried out in a qualified way gives a lot of new and extra information about various analysed subjects. Especially that very often in the instruments of surveys, (e.g, questionnaires) open questions are presented as well, by which much deeper information is obtained.
Research object is the assessment of Lithuanian education system. The aim of the research is to find out how Lithuanian comprehensive school pupils value current education system, quality of teachers’ provided knowledge and ability to prepare pupils for further studies at universities and other higher schools.
The research was carried out between February and May, 2010, i.e, during the second term of the school year. The method of the research was survey in written form (questionnaire). The research is based on the attitude that pupils’ opinion and assessment researches are important because they allow to identify urgent problems or to specify already known ones. 11 and 12 form pupils of Lithuanian comprehensive schools participated in the research. On the whole, 1150 questionnaires were acknowledged acceptable.
Generalising research results we can claim, that:
• Senior class pupils critically evaluate current education system, express rather big distrust.
• It was found, that respondents are prepared best in Lithuanian language and literature and natural science field. The respondents are the weakest in maths and foreign language field.
• It was found, that girls are the strongest in the field of Lithuanian language and literature and boys in maths and natural sciences field.
In fact, respondents agree that the atmosphere in schools is suitable for learning (SI=0.66), quality of knowledge provided at schools, on the whole, is good (SI=0.65), and teachers willingly give advice to pupils on different topics being learnt at school (SI=0.68). However, we need to emphasize, that significance indexes are relatively not high, though higher than 0.50. Respondents do not think that in bigger schools the quality of teaching is better than in smaller ones (SI=0.34), or that learning difficulties arise because of the problems of communication with friends (SI=0.30).
Key words: general school, education system, questioning, opinion indicators.