Education in Albania
The academic year is much similar to that as in the United States, classes starts almost in September or October and end in June or July.
[10] From about 1880 to 1910, several Albanian patriots intent on creating a sense of national consciousness founded elementary schools in a few cities and towns, mostly in the south, numbering to a dozen, but these institutions were closed by the Ottoman authorities in 1905 due to the Sultan Abdul Hamid II being scared this might have triggered an Albanian separation from the Ottoman Empire.
A few of these schools, especially the Italian and French ones, continued to function after World War I and played a significant role in introducing Western educational methods and principles.
This move was intended to stop the rapid spread of schools sponsored directly by the Italian government, especially among Roman Catholics in the north.
The obligatory provisions of the 1934 reorganisation law were never enforced in rural areas because the peasants needed their children to work in the fields, and because of a lack of schoolhouses, teachers, and means of transportation.
These schools too were closed by the constitutional amendment of 1933, but Greece referred the case to the International Permanent Court of Justice, which forced Albania to reopen them.
Every year the state granted a limited number of scholarships to deserving high school graduates, who otherwise could not afford to continue their education.
The great majority of the students attended Italian universities because of their proximity and because of the special relationship between the Rome and Tirana governments.
The Italian government itself, following a policy of political, economic, military, and cultural penetration of the country, granted a number of scholarships to Albanian students recommended by its legation in Tirana.
By September 1943, when Italy capitulated to the Allies and German troops invaded and occupied Albania, education had come to a complete standstill.
The regime's objectives for the new school system were to wipe out illiteracy in the country as soon as possible, to struggle against "bourgeois survivals" in the country's culture, to transmit to Albanian youth the ideas and principles of communism as interpreted by the party, and finally to educate the children of all social classes on the basis of these principles.
At the same time, due to the lack of specialists in many fields of knowledge, a lot of young people were sent abroad to the countries Albania had diplomatic connections with (Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania etc.
In October 1960, however, as Soviet-Albanian tensions were reaching the breaking point, the Albanian Party of Labour issued a resolution calling for the reorganisation of the whole school system.
An additional year was added to the eleven-year general education program, and the whole school system was integrated more closely with industry in order to prepare Albanian youth to replace the Soviet specialists, should the latter be withdrawn, as they eventually were in 1961.
The compulsory eight-year program was designed to provide pupils with the elements of ideological, political, moral, aesthetic, physical, and military education.
First, the eight-year general education segment was noncompulsory, and was compressed into a six-year program that allowed for completion of the first four grades in two years.
Second, those who wanted to proceed to higher institutes after completing secondary school had to devote one year to preparatory study instead of engaging in production work, as full-time students did.
The proportion of eighth-grade graduates who continued with some type of secondary education increased from 39% in 1980 to 73% in 1990, with no village reporting a figure lower than 56%.
The following year, however, a major economic and political crisis in Albania, and the ensuing breakdown of public order, plunged the school system into chaos.
Widespread vandalism and extreme shortages of textbooks and supplies had a devastating effect on school operations, prompting Italy and other countries to provide material assistance.
The highly controlled environment that the communist regime had forced upon the educational system over the course of more than forty-six years was finally liberated set for improvement.
Furthermore, corruption among teachers is becoming a problem as 'envelopes' and expensive gifts are the norm when faced with important deadlines, such as entry averages, or failing the grade.
The latter suffers from vast overcrowding of classrooms, resulting in 2 daytime teaching shifts, while heating during the winter is a major problem.
Meanwhile, private, non-public institutions across all levels have opened up with improved teaching material, staff, and added extra curricular activities but expensive fees.
A number of private universities have been established in different cities of Albania, offering students possibilities of studying in different branches.
Since 2013, the above texts were banned and more reputable ones from Pearson and Oxford were introduced in an effort to harmonise the Albanian education system with the EU.
In the winter of 2018-19, student protests took place in Tirana to demand better education infrastructure, slash tuition fees, and denounce favouritism, corruption, and sexual favours among teaching staff.
