SATISFACTION OF RURAL POPULATION WITH PUBLIC SERVICES IN THE REGIONS: ANALYSIS OF EDUCATIONAL INDICATORS

Abstract

The key idea of the well-being concept strives to answer the question about how well the needs of people in a society are met in different spheres of social life - the physical, economic, social, educational, environmental, emotional, and spiritual – as well as individuals’ evaluations of their own lives and the way that their society operates (Gilbert, Colley, Roberts, 2016). One of the possible suggestions for answering the question: “How well are the needs of people in a society met?” could be the monitoring of citizen’s satisfaction with public services while applying a standardized questionnaire for population covering 193 primary indicators (health, social security, culture, public transport, utilities, environment, recreation and sport, public communication, education, etc). Even 23 indicators are about education that makes educational services a considerable part of all social service system. As the researchers aimed to analyze satisfaction of rural population with public services stressing the education issue, indicators about education dominated in the survey. The data were collected in 2016 - 2017 in 2 regional municipalities: municipalities: Jonava and Radviliskis (N=2368). The results of the analysis demonstrate that rural residents' satisfaction with formal general education services is relatively high. The only negative exception is the "the placement of a child in a pre-school institution based on the place of residence". Furthermore, rural residents poorly evaluated educational services that are related to non-formal education, adult education, the education of children with disabilities, child safety, meaningful xtracurricular activities of children and young people during all day, preventive programs. These major conclusions let the researchers state that local self-governmental institutions are not capable to cope with the quality challenges of some educational services without special intervention policy of the central government and the EU responsible structural units. A negative impact is also reinforced by a rapidly deteriorating demographic situation in Lithuanian rural areas.

Keywords: rural development, societal monitoring, rural population satisfaction, educational service

Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2017.154