Policy for fighting against corruption in education: effects of the current and recommendations for passing the new policies

Corruption represents one of the biggest obstacles for Montenegro's development and its progress towards the EU. The existence of corruption in educational institutions causes not only an economic damage to the citizens and the state, but it also generates harmful patterns of behavior among young generations, and thereby creates conditions for perpetuation and regeneration of corruption. For this reason, besides anti-corruption measures, it is necessary to prevent future generations from accepting corruption, as a normal pattern of behavior. This requires engagement of students, parents, citizens, relevant ministry and the Government. The main goals of this policy study are: a) To identify areas prone to the occurrence of corruption in Montenegrin educational institutions and institutions of students' standard; b) To examine the effectiveness of public policy that has been applied in the fight against corruption; c) To present alternative polices that have already successfully applied in countries of the EU and the region and d) To propose a new, more effective public policy. This study will examine the effectiveness of the Action Plan of the Ministry of Education and Science for the fight against corruption in education; and it will propose amendments in order to improve it. With the aim of identifying areas liable to corruption in Montenegrin educational institutions, we will use the findings of public opinion surveys, data collected trough in - depth interviews and focus groups with representatives of interested parties, data collected requests for free access to the information, and finally figures on the number of cases of corruption in education reported to the relevant institutions and along with media articles on this topic. The most common problem in research on corruption is the impossibility to express the level of corruption in quantitative indicators, due to the lack of information. The remaining problems are related to the inaccessibility of educational institutions and the relative indifference of media towards this topic.