15 April 2022 Statement of the President of the Republic, H.E. Ilir Meta regarding the situation of education in Albania
I wish to share with the whole public a major concern about the situation of education in our country, as a clear indicator of the problems faced by our young people, but also as a major obstacle to a more promising future for them and for the whole Albanian society.
Albania’s latest low ranking in the region and in Europe for the extent and quality of education is a strong signal of alarm for the whole society and a proof of the severe shock of the system as a whole.
It is an alarm bell for the Government, the Assembly, civil society, youth organizations and especially for Albanian families!
It is unacceptable that according to INSTAT less than 30% of the most active part of our society, respectively aged 25-39, to be with secondary education.
It is exclusive and discriminatory that only 20% of girls and women in this active age group have this level of education.
It is intolerable that while 9-year education is a legal obligation for the citizens of Albania, to have about 40% of the population aged 25-39, with only primary education, while, according to EUROSTAT, on average 81% of the population active in the European Union has at least secondary education.
Our Universities do not deserve, even because of the excellent tradition of the past, our academic staff and students, the latest ranking in the region and in Europe due to lack of funding for research, modern laboratory capacity building and very few opportunities for competition in development projects and technological platforms of the time.
All these are premises and incentives, unfortunately, of the mass abandonment of the country by the youth and the depopulation of Albania as a whole.
Therefore, I would definitely consider the crisis in education, a serious existential crisis of our society for today and tomorrow.
A national drama, because it deprives Albania of its most precious wealth, youth and human resources, as promoters of its progress and modernization.
On this occasion, I call on the Assembly and the Government to undertake as soon as possible radical reforms to heal education from the fiction and gangrene of party militancy.
Opening the system and updating it with qualitative pedagogical and academic input, which will be the drafters and implementers of real and transformative reforms of the sector.
To get it out of the coma, to revitalize it and put it on the competitive tracks of the European knowledge and technology market.
Only with a competitive and qualitative education will we give our young people hope and, as Goethe said, roots to be fixed and wings to fly, but not outside Albania.