The State Audit Office completed an audit in higher education four years ago, but the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) has implemented the recommendations provided in the audit for the arrangement of higher education policy only partially. The recently concluded audit report on the activities of the Latvian Maritime Academy (LMA) and its Maritime School continues to shed light on problems in both higher and vocational education and training. The audit findings regarding the educational institution’s late accreditation, inconsistencies in the education of the teaching staff, and improvement of competence indicate shortcomings in the operation of the LMA, which might endanger the quality of this education in general in the future. In their turn, discrepancies in the work organization, remuneration issues, teacher rating, and the adequacy of lectures in curricula raise concerns about the appropriate use of state budget funding.
The primary cause of the deficiencies detected during the audit is non-fulfilment of duties by the LMA responsible employees, weaknesses of the internal control system, and lack of control of the LMA management over compliance with the statutory requirements activities of the LMA and its Maritime School. However, there is also a lack of preventive action by the institutions supervising the educational process, such as the Ministry of Education and Science, the State Education Quality Service (the Service), and the National Centre for Education (the Centre), and their supervision is considered insufficient.
The audit has concluded that although two of the four curricula were accredited, the LMA Maritime School worked without a valid accreditation of the educational institution for almost a year, continuing to hold centralized professional qualification examinations and issuing graduation documents to 30 students. During the audit, the MES referred to the principle of legitimate expectations specified in the legal framework indicating that the lack of accreditation arisen due to an error made by the institution should not prevent students from receiving an educational document. In the assessment of the State Audit Office, the above shows that the MES has still not established an effective system for monitoring educational institutions’ activities, but this may have a significant impact on students’ career and the reputation of the education system.
Besides failing to comply with the requirements of the laws and regulations, the Service granted the status of a scientific institute to the LMA and registered it in the Register of Scientific Institutions unreasonably in June 2019. A scientific institution’s status awarded unjustified empowered this educational institution to participate in various research and project competitions and apply for funding from the state budget and/or EU funds. By the end of September 2020, the problems have been eliminated, and the LMA meets the criteria and status of a scientific institution currently.
The audit identified discrepancies in the education and competence development of the LMA Maritime School teachers and the LMA academic staff. When checking the compliance of 21 teachers of the LMA Maritime School included in the sample with those requirements, the auditors did not gain such assurance about nine teachers. They found insufficient improvement of professional competence regarding six teachers. The auditors could not gain confidence in the academic staff’s competence improvement because the LMA did not keep detailed records.
At the same time, the audit did not assure that the curricula implemented by the LMA Maritime School corresponded to the content of the licensed curricula. For example, the number of hours for some curricula did not correspond to the licensed curricula and teachers’ rating, and the difference was up to 49% during the school year 2019/2020. This fact does not assure that all teachers have performed their duties in full according to the rating and that the calculated and paid remuneration is justified. However, in 2019 and 2020, several teachers worked overtime for a long time by exceeding their acceptable amount and not receiving the stipulated 100% bonus for overtime work.
Although this audit did not assess the quality of curricula and vocational secondary education curricula, the auditors point out that the non-compliance of LMA activities with laws and regulations might affect the quality of education provided by LMA in the future. One must stress simultaneously that the LMA has one of the highest employment rates of graduates, reaching as high as 88% in 2018.
In the course of the audit, the State Audit Office has also addressed the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau about alleged non-compliance of the LMA with the requirements for preventing conflicts of interest in public officials’ activities unreasonably paid bonuses of 3,600 euros from the state budget funding.
To eliminate non-compliance with the requirements of laws and regulations in the operation of educational institutions and to improve the internal control system of the LMA and the LMA Maritime School, there are 12 recommendations provided to the LMA and the MES in total, which the institutions concerned have committed to implement by 2023.