Education in Georgia is essentially the responsibility of the public sector (the vast majority of total enrolment in the case of General education) and has received a lot of attention in recent years with public outlays to the sector tripling between 2010 and 2019 to reach 3.6 percent of GDP. This remains low by OECD standards, however: OECD countries spend on average a little under 5% of their GDP on education.

This report was prepared under the mandate ‘Analysis of the National Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (AKIS) in Georgia’ commissioned for the UNDP project ‘Modernization of Vocational Education and Training (VET) System Related to Agriculture in Georgia’. The mandate includes three larger fields of inquiry, namely an analysis of the Georgian AKIS actors and linkages including a visualization, the identification of assets and gaps in the current system, and recommendations on how to improve.

In a first for Georgia's education sector, the ISET MA Class of 2020 underwent its graduation ceremony entirely online. Guest speakers – including Minister of Education Mikheil Chkenkeli, ISET Governing Board Director Jean-Frederic Paulsen, and Deputy Swedish Ambassador Erik Illes – appeared over Zoom, followed by members of the Class of 2020 itself, and finishing with an address by Valedictorian Guram Lobzhanidze.

May 11 saw the second discussion in ISET's ongoing series of international policy online panels which examine the possible socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second panel was dedicated to what the higher education sector will look like when the pandemic is declared to be over.

International School of Economics at TSU (ISET) and ISET Policy Institute are holding second in the series of international Policy Panels – Re-imagining Higher Education Post-pandemic. It will focus on the impacts of COVID-19 on the higher education sector globally and will bring together top expert views on the longer-term prospects and challenges for the universities and students.