YEREVAN. – After the New Year and Christmas holidays, the education and science ministries of Armenia and Georgia will sign a memorandum on setting up working groups to resolve the education-related matters which the Armenians of Javakheti—a predominantly-Armenian-populated part of Georgia’s southeastern Samtskhe-Javakheti Province—have voiced.

Minister of Education and Science of Armenia, Levon Mkrtchyan, told about the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

He noted that an agreement has been reached with Aleksandre Jejelava, ‎ Minister of Education and Science of Georgia, toward setting up three working groups—for public education, vocational and higher education, and science—between the two countries.

“In public education, we agreed to regulate the problem of [Armenian-language] textbooks,” said Mkrtchyan. “And we will try to solve all the key issues that are of concern for Javakheti Armenians.”

The Armenian minister also noted that, by and large, there are methodological issues in the schools in Javakheti.

“There are translated textbooks that are translated without us [i.e. Armenia], and they are very poor quality,” he added. “It’s also a problem that our [i.e. Armenia’s] participation is not existent in the [Armenian-language] teacher training process.

“Furthermore, there is the bilingual teaching method, when a part of the same subject is taught in Georgian, the other part—in Armenian; we will try to correct this method.”