By Nga Fatjona R. Lubonja Ed.D., ABA
Researcher and Author
Albania, in its effort to align with contemporary European educational standards, is trying to balance progressive legal requirements with the lingering influence of a centralized past in its classrooms. Following progressive European Union benchmarks, the country has put in place forward-looking laws and national education strategies according to European Commission evaluations. Albanian policy, health, and education institutions have gone through many changes in the last years, following the country’s political and economic reforms. Albania holds a past that struggled under the isolation communist period that had affected education at its core. Even though those periods are long gone, their influence remains, not as explicit policy, but as a subtle institutional memory, a heritage of ingrained professional habits, bureaucratic inertia application, and a strict hierarchy of education design.
Albanian applies a centralized education system controlled by the state where historically the education curriculum was designed on a centralized system. Currently, the Ministry of Education and the Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-University Education (ASCAP) design curricular requirements. The curriculum is written for the entire year or in some cases pre-designed for the entire school K-12. Such an approach frequently limits school and individual classrooms’ flexibility to modify day to day teaching methods.
In response to EU accession mandates, Albania’s legal structure has undergone continuous refinement, driven by foundational statutes such as No. 69/2012; Pre-University Education, and the progressive legislative frameworks for individuals with disabilities Legislation PAK. Although these legislative and financial advances have been made, schools still face considerable challenges as a result of historical budget distributions that significantly prioritised centralized institutional care. The education budget is estimated to be about 2.6% of GDP, continuing to remain under the EU average of 4.6%.
The demographic data shows the number of children entering pre-K has decreased 1.2% compared with the previous school year, while enrolled in pre-university education, marking a decrease of 2.57%. These educational transitions also take place within the context of significant demographic alterations, featuring shifts in youth population numbers because of migration and birth rate changes. Despite recent efficiency improvements in teacher training, Albanian school leadership continues to suffer from a low number of teachers and lack of core managerial capacity among school principals.
Evaluating how to translate overarching policy mandates into everyday classroom actions requires addressing long-standing institutional “ghost”. In its rush to satisfy EU reform checklists, Albania has literally translated education frameworks into law while leaving their core meaning application/implementation struggling. What arrives in local classrooms is pure policy jargon that often is “lost in translation”.
Fatjona R. Lubonja Ed.D është studiuese dhe autore. Ka studiuar Neuroshkencë & Shkencat e Shëndetit në Columbia University, New York, USA #fatjonalubonja
