FLASH NEWS
A decade of failures in education - how much longer will Edi Rama continue to finally sink education?
2025-06-12 11:28:36 / IDE
In these 12 years, Edi Rama and his government have achieved one thing with precision: they have failed in every education reform. Rama's promise in 2013 that education would be a priority and investment in it would increase to 5% of GDP today is a pure lie with major consequences for the country's development.
After 12 years, we should have had the results of the reforms, but in fact we have a "heap" of failures that will take 20 or 30 years to "clean up".
• Failure of the Curricular Reform in Pre-University Education
The curricular reform, borrowed from Kosovo and designed for its needs, was implemented in 2013 as a pilot initially and in 2014 throughout Albania without any analysis and in the most unprofessional and worst possible way since the criteria for implementing this reform were all missing: teachers not trained for the new methodology; school infrastructure and teaching aids were lacking to concretize the theory; digital infrastructure was lacking, and schools did not have and still do not have a budget in order to support teaching activities.
And today the result is low quality, confusion of students and teachers.
While the international assessment PISA 2023, where Albanian students were listed last in the world for creative thinking, seals the failure of the reform.
• Higher Education Reform: a failed scheme of control and not of development
The higher education reform trumpeted by Rama as a new “services and financing” scheme did not bring autonomy and development of universities, but a centralized model of administration and financing by the government that further weakened the university system: underfunded universities and with compromised autonomy. While scientific research was ignored altogether. The government pays 500-600 euros per student from the budget, from 18-20 thousand euros per student in OECD countries.
The 2018 student protest with demands for quality teaching, modern learning conditions and standard living conditions refuted the government's propaganda.
The World Bank's 2024 Report on Higher Education, which stated that it has poor quality, outdated curricula unrelated to the labor market, sealed the failure of the reform in higher education.
Edi Rama and his ministers talk about internationalization today, but Albanian students still do not have normal study conditions with campuses, audio-visual aids and functional libraries.
• Failure of the Textbook Reform
The Rama government announced with great fanfare a reform in textbooks with the aim of approaching European models and providing updated knowledge to students. And for this, it was decided to obtain textbooks from Great Britain in some subjects. Higher quality was promised and that it would be just a textbook, not an alternative, but the prime minister quickly withdrew from this promise.
However, the translated textbooks resulted in even greater problems than those on the market because: they did not match the curriculum, the age of the students, our culture and the Albanian context; they were full of scientific, logical and conceptual errors due to poor translation.
The reform of school textbooks is a failure because we have textbooks that are weak in content, full of errors and, why not, selected with criteria that have nothing to do with quality but with clientelistic interests.
• Failure of Teacher Training
Trainings have become a formal process, without professional depth and without real support for teachers, a bureaucratic instrument to obtain credits that affect rank and salary and not to learn something new. Trainings have become a financial scheme, where teachers are forced to pay for training from licensed entities, often with political or clientelistic connections.
Essentially, teacher training aims to: improve the professional skills of teachers, update them with modern teaching methods, adapt to changes in the curriculum or technology, and increase the quality of education that directly affects the preparation of students and the future of the country.
Teacher training is vital for the education system, but when it is implemented as a facade, for propaganda or financial purposes, it has simply become harmful propaganda with
high costs.
• Failure of the State Matura
The Matura exams have become an uncertain process, without stable standards, with scandals that are repeated every year and with tests that often do not really measure the abilities of students. The purpose for which it was created and the aim of standardizing the assessment of students throughout the country, guaranteeing equality in university entrance, replacing corrupt and subjective practices with a transparent system, have already failed.
The State Matura is a deformed model that has failed to measure knowledge and guarantee justice. It is time to stop this formal system that overwhelms students and pave the way for a deep reform that puts the student at the center and every institution takes responsibility.
• The failure with Assistant Teachers is spectacular.
Although schools turned into comprehensive schools on paper, in reality they were not ready because specialized teachers, assistants and minimal conditions were and are missing in schools.
The law on the pre-university system provides for the inclusion and support of children with disabilities through: assistant teachers, individual development plans, training for teachers, cooperation with parents and social structures.
But schools lack not only teachers but also teaching and technological tools, auxiliary materials or physical conditions that enable a genuine inclusion process.
The consequence is a profound damage to equality and human dignity, because the school, which should be an inclusive space for all students, has become a place of exclusion and miseducation.
• Failure in Vocational Education
Vocational education in Albania – empty propaganda. Investments in vocational schools have been made without a strategy, without coordination with the labor market and without employment guarantees for young people who follow these directions. Since vocational education is used for figures in government and donor reports, not for real results, the government finances constructions without content because there is no national strategy related to economic development, but only disconnected segments that do not build a system.
Although the government turned it into a big propaganda and large sums of money were thrown at school buildings, the declining number of students in vocational education clearly proves that vocational schools are disconnected from the real labor market, they are not yet a bridge to secure and well-paid employment.
• Failure of Technology in Education
The COVID 2019 pandemic exposed propaganda and abuse of funds for digital infrastructure, 3.5 million euros and thousands more for smart classrooms had disappeared and technology in teaching and smart tools did not exist. Tablets that did not work or that remained in the basements of the Ministry of Education, online platforms that do not really function and a lack of technological infrastructure in schools, this is the panorama today. Only promises and never integration with technology. Meanwhile, the developed world is moving towards a technological and robotic revolution at a rapid pace.
Every year that passes under the “Rama 4” government is a high cost for the country's development perspective as education is deteriorating. The failures are deep, structural and require a new approach, vision and long-term commitment.
And Rama has come out with the failure, he could not make development happen.
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