Union of Education Norway Evaluation Report of the Cooperation on Trade Unions between Education International, Union of Education Norway & Federation of Mongolian Education and Science Unions

Background:
FMESU was approved member of the International for teachers, Education International (EI) in 1996
which opened doors for cooperation within EI. UEN and FMESU has had a more than 10 years’ cooperation
capacity building of the teachers union in a post-communist society.

Purpose/objective:
To determine if the goals had been met and to which extent the program has had an impact on the overall
professionalism of FMESU in the project period 2003-2008.

Methodology:
The main sources of information were qualitative; desk studies of existing project documentation
and secondary sources of the education sector, including teachers’ training programmes, in-depth interviews
with key stakeholders and focus group discussions with teachers and trade union members. Since the
Canadian Teachers’ Federation undertook a parallel evaluation of the cooperation with FMESU on in-service
training of teachers in English, the evaluation teams conducted some of the interviews jointly and some separately.
A presentation of preliminary findings was shared by the Canadian/Norwegian team with FMESU for validation and
 discussion before the teams departed from Mongolia. 

Key findings:
• FMESU is mainly perceived as protecting teachers’ rights, and less known for influencing Mongolia’s
education policy. FMESU’s strength lies in protecting teachers legally and fighting for their working and salary rights,
 rather than addressing issues like access and quality of education.
• FMESU has focused on the co-operation with the government. FMESU has an agreement with MECS (Ministry)
which includes a wide range of issues from negotiating on teachers’ salaries, upgrading of teachers skills and qualifications to providing quality input to MECS on how to obtain the MDG goals of education for all in Mongolia.
• The cooperation goals were considered to be integral to FMESU, but at the same time the team found that the
project had not been integrated financially and organizationally in FMESU. The project coordinator was until mid-2008
paid directly by EI in Malaysia and not over the FMESU project budget.
• It is considered as an interesting achievement that FMESU has allowed its international sister organizations (UEN/EI) to work on the union’s democratic structures.
• The team found that EI has had the main responsibility for following up the project. UEN’s contribution was related
 to annual counseling and a workshop.  By getting involved in the internal conflicts in FMESU, UEN’s ability to focus on the project’s overall results was weakened.

Recommendations:
• FMESU should integrate the project with the regular organization to strengthen the ownership of FMESU to the
project.
• FMESU should strengthen its capacity on research based analysis of the education system, use it to develop
its education strategy and co-operate universities and research institutes on this.
• Improve information sharing within the union and strengthen the structure of the union and develop clear lines of
 commando. A risk for centralized powers, which will hamper the management.
• UEN should keep up financing co-operational work with FMESU, but if so FMESU should show commitment
to the recommendations given by the evaluators.
• If continued support, UEN should clarify what it could contribute with in terms of  professional assistance.
Important though that such assistance should be a part of FMESU-owned process and UEN/EI’s contribution should then feed into an ongoing process.
• Focus on long term oriented approach with indicators and goals, stay longer on follow up visits, do not pay
project coordinator outside the project cooperation, balance the trade union principals with respect for internal interpretation.

Comments from the organisation, if any:
Union of Education Norway disagrees with some of the conclusions and interpretations of the findings in the evaluation.
Our comments are known by the evaluators, but have not been included in the final report. Our main comments concern the following:

UEN thinks the evaluation team should have put equal emphasize on the views of the two unions involved,
to avoid giving an unbalanced picture of their relation.

The roles and responsibilities between FMSU and UEN as trade unions affiliated to Education International, is not
explained in a satisfactory way. The evaluation team considers UEN not to be sufficiently involved in the cooperation, and at the same time they criticize UEN for interfering in internal matters. Our answer to this is based upon the bounds that FMESU and UEN share within EI by committing to by-laws and principles and values, such as securing the
rights of employees and democratic governing of a union. At the same time we are independent unions and equal partners.  This is the basis of our relation and cooperation.

The issue of the salary of the project coordinator is just a part of a more complex situation within FMESU.
Both EI and UEN explained the situation, but unfortunately this has not been reflected in the evaluation report.
There is a link between the salary issue and the staff problem that reached its height during the visit in 2007,
 where the FMESU leadership tried to fire the coordinator in an open forum. Regarding the whole issue EI and UEN
acted in the best interest of the employee and FMESU based on trade union values and principles.

Finally UEN has a different interpretation of how activities came about in the cooperation agreement.
The internal needs of a union related to the political situation in a given country, is of cause based upon the
expertise and experiences of the national union. That was also the case with FMESU. UEN was not in the position
to or well enough informed of internal Mongolian issues to say where and how to recruit more members.