This note provides an overview of Lithuania’s digital education ecosystem, including the digital tools for system and institutional management and digital resources for teaching and learning that are publicly provided to schools and educational stakeholders. The note outlines how public responsibilities for the governance of digital education are divided and examines how Lithuania supports the equitable and effective access to and use of digital technology and data in education. This includes through practices and policies on procurement, interoperability, data privacy and regulation, and digital competencies. Finally, the note discusses how Lithuania engages in any initiatives, including with the EdTech sector, to drive innovation and research and development towards an effective digital ecosystem.
Country Digital Education Ecosystems and Governance
20. Lithuania
Abstract
Key features
In Lithuania, the government provides some of the components of the country’s digital infrastructure for education. Except for system management tools, their use is rarely mandated. Schools and teachers have freedom to acquire additional digital tools.
Public responsibility for operating primary and secondary schools are devolved to municipalities – excluding secondary VET schools, operated at the central level. The central government focuses on reducing the equity gaps across municipalities, by ensuring equal access to the digital ecosystem of tools, providing both open-access and free licensed resources, offering guidance and support on procurement, and targeting specific schools or groups of students. Other policy levers to foster the uptake of digital tools are in the hands of municipalities and schools, especially as regards curriculum implementation and teacher training requirements.
Lithuania incentivises the development and uptake of innovations by bridging the research, EdTech and education sectors, awarding competitive grants to organisations, subsidising EdTech companies and facilitating their collaboration with schools.
General policy context
Division of responsibility
In Lithuania, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport (hereinafter “the ministry”) is responsible for outlining the general education strategy, devising education policy, preparing relevant legislation, issuing regulations, and planning reforms across all levels of education. While the ministry is entirely responsible for the operation of VET schools, this responsibility is shared with municipalities in primary and secondary education. This devolved context has shaped how public responsibilities for providing access to, supporting the uptake of, and regulating the use of digital technologies in education are assigned. Part of the digital education infrastructure is provided centrally, but a large proportion is acquired locally at the municipal level. Though, the central ministry is the sole public provider of digital tools for system management (e.g. student information system, admission management system), whose use is compulsory across all levels of education. Conversely, providing access to tools for institutional management or resources for teaching and learning is a responsibility shared between the central government (for VET) and municipalities (for primary and secondary education). Schools and teachers also have full autonomy to use and complement the publicly provided tools and resources at their discretion.
Regulation around the access to and use of digital tools and data in education generally falls within the remit of the central government, although specific rules and further guidelines may exist at the municipal level for primary and lower secondary education.
Digital education strategy
In Lithuania, the Ministry of Economy and Innovation is in charge of the digital transformation of the country. Based on the Lithuanian Industry Digitisation Roadmap 2019-2030, the government has established Pramonė 4.0 (“Industry 4.0” in English), a national digitalisation platform that stimulates dialogue about digitalisation between stakeholders across different sectors (e.g. the industry, the research community, education and the government).1,2 This 2019-2030 Roadmap looked at digitalisation as an integral component of education that is expected to help improve the current and future employees’ digital skills and equip them with better (digital) skills for the (future) labour market. Recently, a State Digitalisation Development Programme has updated those objectives for the 2021-2030 period.3
In terms of education-specific digital strategy, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport has recently released a White Paper on EdTech describing the government’s ambition for the sector’s digitalisation.4 The strategy sets out national objectives to be achieved in the next years, sets indicators to monitor progress and envisions possible futures. Its release was accompanied by the production of guidelines for digital education.5
Beyond devising strategic plans, the central government is also responsible for ensuring schools have sufficient hardware infrastructure – although, similarly to software tools and digital resources, schools ultimately decide to use the equipment provided or not. As in many other OECD member countries, during the COVID-19 outbreak the Lithuanian government made substantial investments in hardware infrastructure in schools across all levels of education, including expanding Wi-Fi and mobile connection, providing computers and mobile devices in schools, and offering computers, tablets or mobile devices for students with special education needs. Together with longer-term investments towards enhancing Internet access and speed in institutions or more advanced digital teaching equipment (e.g. interactive whiteboards, simulation tools), those are policy efforts the central government aims to sustain in the years to come through specific programmes, partly supported by procurements made at the municipal levels.
The public digital education infrastructure
As a combined result of the decentralised provision of digital infrastructure in education and the autonomy granted to educational institutions in Lithuania, only a part of the digital ecosystem to which schools have access is publicly provided, let alone by the central government. Instead, except for the system management tools, schools, teachers and students tend to use digital tools and resources that are provided by private EdTech companies or made available freely by universities, teachers and teacher unions (and, to a lesser extent, by philanthropists, education publishers and companies).6
This section reviews two aspects of the public digital infrastructure in Lithuania: digital tools for system and school management, and digital learning resources for teaching and learning.
Digital ecosystem for system and school management
Student information system and learning management system
ŠVIS (Švietimo Valdymo Informacinė), the central government’s student information system, is the cornerstone of the public digital infrastructure for system management in Lithuania. Although ŠVIS is built from IBM Cognus, a commercial tool, it is publicly owned by the government and the data are stored on the ministry’s servers. ŠVIS exchanges data with databases from the student register system that contain statistical information related to all levels of education, including higher education, with data about schools, teachers, and students. Teacher and student data are pseudonymised: individuals are linked to their national personal ID number, which is unique, longitudinal and confidential, but different from their personal educational ID. The system stores students’ standardised assessment results, as well as teacher-given grades in upper secondary education and VET (from non-standardised exams). ŠVIS is updated in real time so that authorised users, be they administrators, school principals, or teachers, have access to analytics dashboards quickly after the information is collected.
The government uses ŠVIS primarily to manage and monitor the education system, compute statistics and derive indicators for supporting educational reform discussions in Lithuania. ŠVIS data can be linked to data coming from other central registers that use the same unique and longitudinal ID, such as the population register, the health system register, or the social insurance system register.7 Some of those data, pseudonymised, are also openly available on public dashboards (such as the open data portal), while other parts are only available upon request from government officials or researchers. The central government also uses the information collected though ŠVIS to report and announce job opportunities for teachers and school principals. As of 2023, government officials estimate that ŠVIS is yet to be used at its full potential.
No learning management system (LMS) is publicly provided to schools. Instead, schools acquire learning management systems sold by commercial providers. The most widely used learning management systems are Google Classroom, Microsoft 365 for Education, and the Lithuanian tools TAMO8 and Mano dienynas.9 Those tools fulfil the core functionalities of a learning management system (student management, calendar, content repository, etc.), but also other functionalities, such as that of an administrative function system or of a customer relationship management system (CRMS). For instance, TAMO includes functions such as lesson scheduling, gradebook, homework assignments, attendance tracking, data storage, calendar, analytics, etc. Additionally, TAMO provides a mobile application that tracks student progress in real time, including school activities, and provides statistical analysis of data, showing positive or negative trends in their learning. Other schools use Mano dienynas, which is more of an electronic diary that allows to see class schedule and daily events. Parents can access it to see their child’s learning progress, compare it with the class average via analytics reports, and communicate with different school staff. Alternatively, schools have also access to a version of Moodle that was customised for them by Kaunas University of Technology under the publicly funded Digital Transformation of Education Consortium.10
There is a protocol to make the various learning management systems interoperable with ŠVIS to facilitate data transfers. Agreements were made on the transfer of student grades from TAMO or Mano dienynas to ŠVIS.
Admission, study guidance and career opportunities
The Association of Lithuanian Higher Education Institutions for Centralised Admissions (Lietuvos aukštųjų mokyklų asociacija bendrajam priėmimui organizuoti or LAMA BPO), the student admission management system used in VET (and in higher education) is another example of a digital tool developed by a private vendor but managed by the central government at the system level.11 Students use LAMA BPO to apply for their admission to VET institutions, as well as to higher education institutions. Institutions also use it to select and process students’ applications against their own criteria. The platform provides information about the institutions and programmes to which students can apply, such as entrance exams, required application documents and application deadlines.
Students interested in VET can find study and career guidance on Atvira Informavimo Konsultavimo Orientavimo Sistema, or AIKOS.12 AIKOS is another platform at the central level operated by the ministry’s National Agency for Education (Nacionalinė Švietimo Agentūra, or NŠA). Via a search engine, AIKOS hosts counselling services and general information about VET-related professions, qualifications, study, and training programmes, and about VET institutions and their admission rules.
In primary and secondary education (except VET), municipalities provide schools with their own student admission management systems. Starting from 2024, the government has planned to develop a central system for school admission management at all levels of education that will allow tracking students’ data and make their transition easier when they move from a school in one municipality to another.
Exams and assessments
The ministry has been engaged in the digitalisation of both the national student evaluations and the end-of-course exams.
As of 2022, several parts of the national student evaluations – which are low-stakes for students and carried out every two years in grades 4, 6, 8 and 10 (primary and secondary education) for system monitoring – are administered online, mainly in mathematics and in Lithuanian. Similarly, some parts of the final exams in upper secondary education and VET – high-stakes for students – are administered online.
In both cases, the ministry uses the NECIS (national examination centre information system), an open-source digital system for assessment administration provided by TAO (“Test Assisté par Ordinateur”, or computer-based assessment), a Luxembourgish service provider known for its open assessment technologies that are now used in 194 countries.13 By 2026, after the end of the pilot phase, the objective is to fully digitise both types of assessments, so that exams and evaluations are entirely administered, taken and graded online through digital assessment platforms such as TAO.
Digital ecosystem for teaching and learning
In Lithuania, teachers have full autonomy in terms of choice and use of digital tools for teaching and learning, as much as schools have autonomy in terms of choice and use of digital tools for institutional management (see the example of the LMS above). In this context, the ministry still provides teaching and learning resources though. Part of those resources are made openly available to anyone, while others are restricted to individuals enrolled in the education system. In either case, there is no obligation to use them.
In terms of openly accessible resources, the ministry’s national agency for education maintains Svietimo Portalas, a repository of open educational resources targeted at primary and secondary education levels and available to everyone.14 On Svietimo Portalas, interested actors can also find information to develop their own educational resources and make them available for free. To add to those resources, during the COVID-19 pandemic the government also offered state TV education for secondary students, whose content is still available online at lrt.lt.15 Finally, the ministry also openly provides a comprehensive digital self-assessment system, Informacinę testavimo sistemą, that targets primary and secondary education levels and covers a wide range of subjects (mathematics, languages, history, biology, information technology, etc.).16 Those resources are a mix of static (e.g. textbooks) and interactive digital resources (e.g. adaptive assessments, simulations), including support tools for students with special needs (e.g. assistive technologies);17 and a mix of publicly developed (e.g. by the ministry) or publicly procured (e.g. from private vendors) resources.18
In addition, the ministry publicly provides digital teaching and learning resources that are only accessible to individuals enrolled in the formal education system. Most notably, the ministry has secured access to the Microsoft 365 for Education tools for all public schools. Anyone in those schools, from school principals to teachers and students, have free access to a wide range of digital tools for teaching and learning covered by Microsoft 365, including virtual classroom environments, which they can decide to use or not.
The ministry has also developed an online platform for teacher development that also features teaching vacancies in schools.19
Access, use and governance of digital technologies and data in education
Ensuring access and supporting use
Equity of access
In Lithuania, the government has set up several policy mechanisms to ensure that everyone has equitable access to the digital education ecosystem, or at least to the ones that are publicly provided.
First, the tools that the government uses or publicly provides, such as the tools for system management (e.g. the student information system, the student admission management system in VET), or the digital resources for teaching and learning (e.g. free licences to Microsoft 365 resources), are made available to all schools, public or private (and, in fact, to anyone interested in the case of open education resources). Second, in some situations where it is not the government’s responsibility to publicly provide a specific digital tool, as is the case with schools’ choice of learning management systems for instance, the government may nonetheless ensure that there is a public or open alternative available, such as the open version of Moodle that the public Kaunas University of Technology has designed to meet the needs of Lithuanian schools.
Further to providing equal access, the government has identified students with special needs, students from low socio-economic background, and schools in rural areas, as three priority targets in terms of ensuring equity of access to education, including digital education. The Millennium Schools programme is an illustration of the government’s aspiration to tackle student achievement gaps.20 First implemented in 2022 in smaller schools and expected to be rolled out over a four-year timeline, the programme aims at ensuring equal and high-standard conditions for learning for every student in every municipality of Lithuania through differentiated investments in the modernisation of schools.
Finally, the central government regularly invests in hardware infrastructure to improve Internet speed and access in schools. During the COVID‑19 crisis, those investments benefitted public and private schools alike, and also targeted students with special needs. However, government officials acknowledge that there remains a large variance between schools in terms of the access to digital technology (for instance, between rural and urban schools). As the government’s attempts to ensure equitable access and use in class are taking the form of guidelines, rather than being mandated as rules, achieving equity still depends on school principals.
Having equitable access to hardware infrastructure does not necessarily lead to equity in the use of software tools either. The sections below describe what efforts Lithuania deploys to measure and bridge the gap between the availability and uptake of digital technologies in education.
Supporting the use of digital tools and resources
The ministry uses both direct and indirect incentives to support the use of digital tools at the system, school, and classroom levels.
First, the ministry mandates the use of the tools for system management that it directly provides, through binding regulation. Schools are required to use ŠVIS to transfer their student data to the central databases for instance, which incentivises them to collect and process student information in a digital format accepted by ŠVIS in the first place, ultimately incentivising the use of digital tools at the institutional level.
Second, the ministry gives schools and teachers full autonomy to procure additional digital tools and resources at their discretion, and supports them in doing so in various ways. Together with the Central Procurement Agency (“Centrine Perkancioji Organizacija”), the ministry either directly procures digital tools and resources on behalf of schools (e.g. Microsoft 365 licences) or assist schools in all medium-to-large procurements.21 For instance, it negotiates with suppliers the price and contractual conditions of the digital tools that schools want to acquire through grants, financial incentives, or non-earmarked subsidies (schools’ operational budget in the case of publicly funded schools); and it provides guidance on procurement processes and lists of recommended – rather than pre-authorised – tools for schools to procure on their own.
Third, the central government supports the use of digital tools for system and school management, as well as the use of digital teaching and learning resources, by offering central guidance and professional learning opportunities. For instance, the ministry offers online courses aimed at developing the digital competences of teachers and students, and organises competitive projects based on digital technologies. In the case of teaching and learning resources, the ministry also takes advantage of its student information system – ŠVIS – to administer surveys and monitor the uptake of digital resources to conduct research and development (R-D) and support their use.
Cultivating the digital literacy of education stakeholders
Developing teachers’ digital literacy is one way to engage education stakeholders in the digitalisation of the sector. However, in Lithuania, the ministry does not decide what competences teachers must acquire in their pre-service training, as this decision falls within the remit of teacher-training institutions that set their own curriculum – following a set of ministerial guidelines on teacher-training programmes.22 OECD TALIS data from 2018 show that using ICT for teaching featured in less than half (45%) of lower secondary teachers’ pre-service training in Lithuania – a proportion 11 points below the OECD average. Similarly, the central government does not decide what competences teachers must develop as part of their in-service training. Municipalities can impose standards on teacher recruitment and professional development. This prerogative gives municipalities a key policy lever for cultivating teachers’ digital literacy as they can provide incentives towards certain types of training, such as training in teaching with digital technology. In 2017, 69% of teachers in Lithuania reported that they took part in professional development in ICT skills, on par with the OECD average (60%).
Another lever through which to foster students’ and – indirectly – teachers’ digital literacy is reform of the national curricula. In 2022, the ministry updated the national curriculum to integrate, as a learning outcome, students’ skills to use and understand digital technology. In lower secondary education, the integration of digital competences into other compulsory subjects is enforced by a rule, making Lithuania the European country where lower secondary students have the largest amount of instruction time dedicated to digital competences (152 hours a year).23 Here also, municipalities can add their own guidelines provided that they do not contradict the national curriculum.
Finally, the ministry provides students and their parents with information about the use of digital technology and data in education. For instance, parents receive reports generated from ŠVIS data where they can check, for instance, the number of computers used in their children’s schools, the frequency of use by teachers, etc.
Governance of data and digital technology in education
As is the case across European Union countries, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) defines the largest part of Lithuania’s regulation around the protection of data and privacy, in education as well as in other sectors. The government complements this general regulation with further rules and guidelines that are specific to the education context, such as the ones that protect specifically the privacy and personal data of students and school staff. In practice, those specific rules do not go much beyond what the EU GDPR imposes, though; and any non-traditional use of student data, for instance, would require parental approval.
Lithuania has also set up rules and guidelines to ensure that authorised researchers can access and use education data under equitable conditions, and to allow public or private research and development (R‑D) agencies to access and use educational administrative data – providing that data re-identification is almost impossible. There are different rules and practices in place in terms of data use for different registers, and each register has its own internal rules. For example, the databases related to the student information system – ŠVIS – and all other related registers, have their own internal rules.
Beyond rules around the access to, and use and protection of, data in education, Lithuania has issued a handful of other rules concerning the management of data and digital technology at the central level. One example concerns the use of specific technical standards across all levels of education as a means to improve the interoperability between ŠVIS (the government’s student information system) and the various schools’ learning management systems. As of 2022, however, there is no specific legislation around the accountability, interpretability or efficiency of any automated decision-making digital technologies acquired by schools, as the use of such tools remains minimal for the time being.
Government officials also report that schools use SELFIE, a free digital tool provided by the European Commission to help them assess where they stand with their digital transformation.24 Once schools run their self-assessment, SELFIE provides them with personalised guidance and recommendations – i.e. no rules – about digital tools they could consider acquiring to improve their use of technology for teaching and learning.
Supporting innovation, research, and development (R‑D) in digital education
Developing a national education technology ecosystem presents challenges both to develop appropriate local tools and to incentivise relevant innovation by external stakeholders. Providing incentives, supporting R-D, and funding education technology start-ups are part of the typical innovation portfolio countries could consider.
Lithuania supports academic research on digital technology in education through several means. To facilitate the use of education data (within the legal framework to protect data and privacy), all interested researchers can request access to documentation of the datasets collected by the ministry and the National Agency for Education (in large part via ŠVIS), which are publicly available on the open data portal. In addition, the ministry clearly and publicly communicates its R-D priorities (and digital education is now one of it); it funds research programmes specific to the topics of digital education, such as the ones pursued by the Research Council of Lithuania;25 and it directly commissions academic research papers, on an ad-hoc basis. The commissioned research topics so far have covered the use of digital technologies to improve learning outcomes, to improve student engagement, to support teaching, to improve school management functions and to improve assessment.26 For instance, one of the current research projects relates to the use of AI-based learning analytics in Lithuania.27
Further to that, Lithuania maintains public-private relations with the EdTech sector and private partners to support the development of innovations in education. The government provides monetary incentives in the form of public tenders for the development of digital tools and learning resources by public or private organisations, as well as by teachers and individuals. The government also invests in start-up companies in the EdTech sector, subsidises R-D through competitive grants, and develops its own EdTech tools thanks to funds granted by the European Commission as part of the post-COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience Facility programme.28 There are also non-monetary incentives put in place to support innovation and cross-sector collaboration. For instance, the government organises (or delegates the organisation of) conferences and forums to encourage the collaboration between EdTech companies, often regrouped under the EdTech Lithuania association, and educational institutions; and it invites innovators to test and improve their educational technologies through testbed events.29
Looking forward, Lithuania aims to support in priority the development of online education platforms and digital teaching and learning resources; to continuously improve the digital tools it already provides, such as ŠVIS (the student information system), LAMA BPO (the student admission management system), and NECIS (the digital system to support assessment administration); to allow for automatic data exchange between learning management systems through common standards, and; to connect the digital credential system used in higher education with the credentials awarded in VET institutions.
Notes
← 1. See also the dialogue of the National Digital Coalition here: https://www.skaitmeninekoalicija.lt/en; and the Roadmap here: https://industrie40.lt/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Lithuanian-Industry-Digitisation-Roadmap-2019-2030_final.pdf
← 2. Industry 4.0: https://industrie40.lt/platform-pramone-4-0-structure/. The highest level of platform is managed by the National Industrial Competitiveness Commission that consists of the representatives from: the Ministry of the Economy and Innovation, Lithuanian Robotics Association (LRA), the Lithuanian Innovation Centre (LIC), Lithuanian Business Confederation (ICC LITHUANIA), Government of the Republic of Lithuania, Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, Ministry of Social Security, Labour, the Centre for Physical Sciences and Technology (FTMC) and others
← 3. 2021-2030 State Digitisation Development Programme: https://www.e-tar.lt/rs/lasupplement/13206c504e8d11ec862fdcbc8b3e3e05/339e03904e9511ec862fdcbc8b3e3e05/
← 4. White Paper: https://e-seimas.lrs.lt/rs/lasupplement/TAD/39632357b9cf11ec9f0095b4d96fd400/696cd1430f5511ee9ac6bb8cb9c06455/
← 5. Guidelines for digital education: https://emokykla.lt/upload/media/public/Kita-aktuali-medziaga/Skaitmeninio%20%C5%A1vietimo%20gair%C4%97s%20_%20galutinis%20(2).pdf
← 6. See for instance: 1) Digital tools about cyber security from Telia, Kibernetinio saugumo žaidimas „Spoofy“ and 2) Digital tool about coding from Infobalt association Angis.net - lietuviška Python programavimo platforma (lrt.lt)
← 7. Social insurance system: https://www.sodra.lt/?lang=en
← 16. Self-assessment system: https://beta.etestavimas.lt/
← 17. Examples of resources for students with special needs: Skaitmeninių priemonių rinkinys įtraukiajam ugdymui „EduSensus“ | Emokykla
← 18. Examples of publicly developed resources: Courses for primary schools (abroad) https://nsa.vma.lm.lt/course/index.php?categoryid=25; Lituanistinio švietimo įstaigoms. Pradinis ir pagrindinis ugdymas (emokykla.lt); History 9-10 grade: SMP – Istorija 9–10 kl. (emokykla.lt).
← 19. Online platform for teacher development: https://rsvis3.emokykla.lt/cognos/bi/?perspective=authoring&pathRef=.public_folders%2FBendroji%2Binformacija%2FPedagogai%2FPedagog%25C5%25B3%2Bporeikis&id=iCB246C0CDDA742D2A7643E546DD5CF1B&objRef=iCB246C0CDDA742D2A7643E546DD5CF1B&action=run&format=HTML&c
← 20. Millennium Schools programme: https://tukstantmeciomokyklos.lt/en/home-en/
← 21. Centrine Perkancioji Organizacija: https://www.cpo.lt/
← 22. Guidelines on teacher training programmes: https://www.e-tar.lt/portal/en/legalAct/TAR.239675132D8A/sZBluFrbLQ
← 23. Digital education at school in Europe: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d7834ad0-ddac-11e9-9c4e-01aa75ed71a1
← 25. Research Council of Lithuania: https://www.lmt.lt/en
← 26. Selection of commissioned academic papers: Creating an environment conducive to learning: finding the enablers of the school community https://spektras.lmt.lt/anotacija.php?JbW8fqIwMqA9XRVHeisYcub1DPgcJCyYp7oQ2DAvqz0; Artificial Intelligence in schools: scenarios for the development of learning analytics in the modernisation of general education in Lithuania https://spektras.lmt.lt/anotacija.php?JbW8fqIwMqA9XRVHeisYcub1DPgcJCyYp7oQ2DAvqz0; Emotional and educational difficulties experienced by pupils and their coping in inclusive education: the COVID-19 context https://spektras.lmt.lt/anotacija.php?X8d0PhdqYVGpiUk+I2g6RCXnJryx2heCjMQdwYzBTnk=
← 27. Artificial intelligence in schools: scenarios for the development of learning analytics in the modernization of general education in Lithuania: https://www.sietuvos.vilnius.lm.lt/2021/09/15/dirbtinis-intelektas-mokyklose-mokymosi-analitikos-pletojimo-scenarijai-modernizuojant-bendraji-ugdyma-lietuvoje/
← 28. For instance, see https://www.bitdegree.org/about-us/eu-projects or https://www.vedliai.lt/es-projektai