transferred its functions to the Department of the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture; by doing so, Lithuania disregarded the existing human rights obligations the country committed itself to. On 10 November this year, the Government of Lithuania has reached an agreement on the establishment of the Department of National Minorities at the meeting of the Strategic Committee of the Lithuanian Government. This is seen as a positive development. The new wording of the Education Act of 2011 was adopted without taking into account the views of the Russian and Polish communities, who gathered more than 60 000 signatures against the adoption of this act on the eve of the voting at Seimas (ed. translator: Lithuanian Parliament). The Act does not enshrine a concept of “minority schools”, meaning the same standards of equipping the classes with teaching materials apply to schools not to minority language of instruction compared Lithuanian schools. The previous version of the law contained a provision on the right to secondary education (1 to 12 classes) in the mother tongue, while the new version of the Education Act provides that all subjects relating to history and geography of Lithuania, familiarity with the environment and civics must be taught exclusively in the Lithuanian language. As a result, the number of candidates unsuccessful in passing the state language examination is growing with every year, according to the National Examination Centre under the Ministry of Education and Science of Lithuania. The issue of