Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at meeting with teachers who have been hired through “Teachers for Albania” portal:
Greetings everyone!
I believe you all remember a video was uploaded on social media networks not long ago, showing a teacher telling schoolchildren that “Ismail Kadare raised the Independence Flag in 1912.” It was not 100, but few years ago before we decided to challenge the old system, which was consolidated through the relay of the ruling parties to consider the teachers organization merely an extension of the political parties, with the latter not giving a damn that by hiring their party’s militants and devotees, who had nothing to do with the teacher’s mission, they actually betrayed the families who voted them and, above all, they betrayed the dreams, hopes, wishes of hundreds , thousands of children every year.
I was laughing together with the Education Minister when we saw here a teacher I know since when serving as Tirana Mayor. She did whatever she could to ensure I was not elected as Tirana Mayor. But this is not important at all! She did it as a Tirana citizen, who, in her own right, couldn’t stand me. But she is a teacher who teaches children right and does her work pretty well.
How is it possible we can fall into the trap of retaliation as we did for a quarter of a century by turning teachers into a cannon fodder for the politics, making teachers across the country feel uncertain for their job position as they were often transferred to different schools, not because of their knowledge and competence, but merely and just for reasons of unreasonable politics, while being always available to fill the halls for electoral campaign meetings.
Moreover, the education system for the teachers of the future was reduced to nothing, ranking at the bottom of the entire university system, while low-performing high school students rushing to enrol in the faculties where future teachers were graduated in. This because being a teacher meant you were the smallest cog in a big wheel. In fact, being a teacher means you are the centre of gravity for a family with children.
I believe it is a feeling of legitimate pride that a student from Shkodra, who has been awarded the excellence certificate and who took the floor earlier, has chosen to enter the teacher education faculty along with 300 excellent students. Not long ago it was totally unimaginable and unthinkable for the excellent students thinking of going into teaching.
Some 300 excellence students who have already enrolled to go into teaching are the biggest guarantee to tell everyone that the education reform we have launched is working and the Albania we want will be a thousand times better than the today’s Albania. Meanwhile, what we have today is a thousand times better we had until yesterday.
The government will cover all related cost for the 300 excellent students who have chosen to go into teaching. They won’t pay a single penny for the university tariffs, because teachers are the light in the eyes of our policies.
Likewise, the rest of students who have decided to enrol in teaching education faculty have an overall mark over seven. It is a relatively high mark, unthinkable for the teaching schools who had turned into a nest for failures at high school. You are teachers and know quite well that the today’s mark 5 is equal to the mark 2 of the time when the teacher who voted against me was attending the university.
It was not 100 years ago, but not long ago when footages showing the arrest of a head teacher was circulated on social media, one of few cases that reinforces the rule that women and girls are less corrupt than men and boys. She was charged with taking bribes from young mothers, or girls who wanted to go into teaching and were given no other opportunity, but pay bribes.
We all listened the account of a teacher from Korça, but I am pretty sure that many of you attending this meeting have experienced similar situations before being granted the opportunity to compete through the portal as it was impossible to become a teacher. The teacher who ranked first in Tirana was jobless for eight years. Can Albania afford to fire a competent mathematics teacher for eight years and be replaced by someone who used fingers in a calculation?
The parents of the entire spectrum of political party supporters were the ones to pay the price of incompetent teachers who counted by using fingers. So the political parties betrayed the very people who voted for them by becoming offices of clientele and turning the entire education system into a big disgusting clientele.
Today we have taken a step forward. We are currently working on the reform to overhaul all regional education directorates and a discussion with the officials of the Ministry of Education took place before this meeting. Today it is worth mentioning the fact that some 4374 teachers, who have no idea where the education directorate is located, were hired during the previous 2017-2018 school year after bagging good scores in exams and a merit-based system and automatically became teachers without giving account over which political party they vote for.
What I wish to say today is that I expect you all not only to perform best in the job as teachers, but thanks to the fact you are appointed to the job according a merit-based system, you should also help the school principals so they can do their job too, just like the schoolchildren deserve.
I listened the case of the teacher from Patos. She represents a unique case of a group of teachers in the Republic of Albania, who although they may live either in Patos, Malesi e Madhe or in other regions of the country, intellectually they don’t live in Albania, but, under the EU’s online twinning program they live in a European community of knowledge and by joining this network they are people who have a special expertise. On one hand, we should do whatever it takes to expand this group. They should teach us how to expand this group so that more Albanian teachers, regardless of the place they live physically, intellectually they live in the world of European knowledge through the twining programme. On the other hand, I am not pretty sure whether the head teachers are equally competent teachers like the one from Patos.
We will establish and make operational the school for head teachers within this year. The school principals should go to school and learn what it takes and means to serve as head teacher. One could be a very good teacher, but not necessarily a good school manager. It is a completely different task. However, no school for head teachers would achieve success, if each and every one of you are not demanding when it comes to the school management. The school management should fit your ambitions and insistence, because you never gave up and joined the teachers’ corpus just because you deserve it and owe it to no one. You don’t owe it to a political party, but to your parents, who provided you the opportunity to become what you are today. As such, people like you who have taken the position based on your merit should tolerate no one to violate this merit.
We are currently discussing with the Education Minister the ways to set up a network community of all teachers in Albania. Our community, our school. A big community for information. Information about the minister’s work and everything you have to listen whatever is said in the arena of politics.
I always wonder what do teachers, policemen, nurses and everyone else working the state administration think when listening about “the wrongdoings I commit on daily basis?” What do they think?
The fact that the people know to distinguish between the slander and the truth won’t satisfy me. This is not enough. This is not merely a matter of slander and the truth. This is a matter of energies and motivation. That’s why we should create a community with no filters, interpreter, or news portals standing between us, but we ourselves in front of each other, with every teacher from Tropoja to Konispol being granted the opportunity to speak up and be heard, and every new program being discussed, every initiative be voted in and where every head teacher is felt being monitored and held accountable. Any education system initiative should be directly explained by the Minister of Education herself.
You should be well informed when hearing speculations that the “criminal” minister embezzled the teachers’ social insurance contributions, and you should not be satisfied with a statement rejecting and denying such speculations. These are issues that concern the community, the big family of teachers of all Albania. It doesn’t matter at all who they vote for, but what does really matter is that they should always know who and to where is leading them.
It is crucially important that you help the reform to progress in two aspects; first, simply explaining that should the painful reforms for the today’s generation of parents fail, it is the today’s children the ones who would pay the price for the lack of our courage, determination and readiness to make sacrifices for the next generation.
Reforms are certainly painful, because it is definitely important that those who deserve should replace those who are incompetent. The 400 teachers who lack the relevant education and training should no longer be part of the education system. It is not easy, but we should all be aware that what we are doing today will form the basis for the future, because if we see today 25 and 30-year-old boys and girls with no perspective for the future this is the outcome of the fact that for more than 20 years no one thought how to reform the education system in order to trust our children to teachers who deserve to work as teachers, and learn how to guide many of these children towards the university and others towards the vocational education.
It is equally important to explain why we want the textbooks we are providing today for free to be returned at the end of the school year.
I have heard many fantastic comments. People who claim “you are distressing our children.”
Why children are distressed when told “Hey, the book you hold in your hands is your best friend! The book you hold in your hands is your irreplaceable friend. The book you hold in your hands is the friend who will help you to lead a life you wish for. That’s why you should look after this friend.”
Children understand it. The ones who do not understand are their distressed parents. They are distressed at the idea that a book can be preserved. They are worried about the idea that children may scratch books and to them scratching means freedom, while preservation means dictatorship. This needs to be explained. It is not a matter of money. It is not a matter of budget.
We are providing free of charge textbooks to over 190 000 schoolchildren from the first to fourth grade, but schoolchildren with special needs from first to 12 grade will receive the textbooks for free. The fifth-graders will also receive their textbooks for free next year and hopefully, all primary education schoolchildren will get them for free by the end of our second term in office.
It is not a matter of money. Sweden, the world’s most social nation – a model that even Germans say they can’t imitate – provides the textbooks to children for free provided that they return them at the end of the school year. Why? Because of shortage of money? No, that’s all because of the relation with the book. It is the love for the book. It is the respect for that object, totally different from any other object which speaks to mind and heart, eyes and ears and your entire body, something that distinguishes you from others.
Neither the nations, nor the people are distinguished for what might be in their possession, but for their knowledge. Many of the nations with no inherited wealth are today the wealthier than many other countries rich in resources. Israel has almost no natural water sources, but it has built the most excellent water supply system. Albania is richer than any other European country in water sources, except Norway, but water supply is the greatest problem facing today. This all because of mind and knowledge that are not to be found on earth, but on the book.
This is what needs to be explained. Meanwhile, the system needs to consolidate in order to figure out the penalties due to imposed on those who fail to return the textbooks. The penalties are not to be imposed on children, but on their parents, on those who claim they are being distressed and surely oppose the decision to ban the use of cell phones at school.
The new school year will usher in a new era in terms of the use of cell phone at school. Children and teachers alike won’t be allowed to use their phones at school. The teachers will hand over their cell phones at the beginning of the class and collect them at the end of the day. Cell phones are dangerous and hazardous pollutants to the education environment. And what happens to the highly hazardous pollutants? They are buried and recycled.
I remain confident this will mark a significant change.
Meanwhile, we are making preparations for the decision banning the use of cell phones in the state institutions that have become internet coffee-like institutions.
To conclude, I am pleased to confirm we have employed 700 teaching assistants for education of schoolchildren with special needs. We took the first step by initially employing a group of 300 teaching assistants to number to over 700 today. You know quite well what it means having a child with special skills in a classroom of 30 children. It is impossible for a teacher, it is impossible for the child and it is horrible for the parent. This is another important step which will add to the school’s social dimensions.
What we need to do all together is that the school in the community and the virtual community we shall create to establish constant communication without having to meet physically, just as the teacher from Patos maintains continued communication with European peers she has never met, we must work for a school’s social dimension. We need to follow the lead of wealthy countries.
Should our schools take social dimensions, then there will be no children like the one showed on a video that circulated on the internet, there will be no families living in completely ruined homes, which are not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of them. The ruined houses are far less than that and it is totally possible that along with the school communities, the parent and teacher communities we express solidarity with the poorest and teach our children that the showing solidarity with the poorest ones is the same just as the book. It teaches you what the book can’t and who keeps the book close and, on the other hand, keeps the needy persons close, he will no longer need nothing else. Life is all under his control.
Thank you very much!
