Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the signing of the agreement with the British Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education Institutions:

Hello everyone!

We certainly are happy to be in the European football championship, but we would certainly be even happier, if we were in the European Championship of top quality. This is why we have invited the British Agency for Quality Assurance, to pass a very difficult but necessary test for all institutions of higher education.

A British prime minister said some time ago that education is the best economic policy. It was precisely Prime Minister Gordon Brown who, just as the whole Labour party, did a lot for education. Whereas, here in Albania, we have considered education reform as a necessity, which governments in the past avoided for years, and this resulted fatal for the young generation.

Actually, two years and a few months ago we had the largest number of universities per capita in Europe. We had 8 times more universities than Great Britain, 20 universities for 1 million residents. A system that allowed private institutions to issue 32 thousand diplomas, of which 16 thousand were issued by just one university; a system that took from Albanian parents 148 million Euros, and issued approximately 900 degrees to foreigners although no class was taught in a foreign language. Of course we would be glad if these over 900 foreign graduates would foster the Albanian language, but it is very hard to believe.

We have broken another record as a state; we succeeded in drafting 7 national education strategies in 20 years, and we managed even to have 2 national education strategies within a governing mandate of the same party. This because, the party had two different ministers in one term. Of course, you can expect from such an anarchy neither quality nor a reliable accreditation process, because for the sake of truth it was an accreditation process that eventually resulted a farce just like the so-called liberalization process of Higher Education. Therefore, we were compelled to eventually close 18 private institutions of higher education, one public institution, 16 branches, and also to suspend the activities of 12 other institutions, in order to put them on the track of the law, and give them up to 2-year time to meet the conditions set by law and by-laws.

We would have rather have the process of accreditation with the British agency started earlier, but, actually, just like the representatives of the agency said, it was impossible. Firstly, we had simply to put the institutions of higher education on the track of the law.

If there is one sector where we can see a screaming example of the gap between what is written in the law and what is found in reality, this is the education sector that we inherited, and Higher Education in the most screechy way for every policy maker who is conscientious in relation to the obligation of education towards parents, children, and the future of the country.

The Ministry of Education and Sports intervened to stop the quotas for part-time studies, quotas that would count 28.117 students. A whole part-time Albania, a whole part-time system, a whole part-time farce to tell ourselves: “everybody in this country is engaged in higher studies”.

Today is the day to thank once again the British Council for the great opportunity that gave us, by providing us the contact of the British Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, and putting us in the conditions to start this cooperation in June 2014. The reputation of this agency is not to be questioned. It is a well-known reputation both in Europe and globally.

The agency is one of the founders of the network accreditation agencies, which for us has a double significance. On the one hand, the agency will make an assessment of all current functional institutions of higher education, both public and private. This is the venue to highlight how surprising it is to continue having in Albania people who, despite having qualification, attack our reforms for the simple fact that we established a prerequisite to address the need for quality, in a completely equal and non-discriminatory way, in the public education funded by the state and in the public education funded by the private. It is ridiculous that this debate still goes on, that there is still an effort, fortunately as mediocre as it is minor, to make a discriminatory distinction between the system of state-funded Higher Education and the one funded by the private. For us, education is a public good that we should guarantee from all possible sources, whether state funding sources or private funding sources.

The fact is that the foundation of our reform ends the story of education as business, and it ends the possibility to create hotbeds of university or secondary education for profit. This is the essence.

With the signing of this agreement today, the British Agency of Quality Assurance will enable us to have a faithful picture of the assessment and certification of quality, integrated with the same standards and procedures for all institutions of higher education, funded whether by the state or the private.

In our view, the fact that today we have a free and equal competitive basis is an innovation that will bring increased quality in higher education; it will bring a lot more opportunities to move forward while learning from each other as a result of competition. A mother state education and a stepmother private education is the appearance of a completely distorted way to understand how in fact these are two sides of the same coin and two tracks for the same train, the train to education.

On the other hand, the agency will help us build the domestic capacities of higher education institutions, in terms of their research and decision-making quality, thus creating the basis for our National Accreditation Agency to take responsibility and, why not, join in a reasonable time the network of accreditation agencies, and be included in the European registry.

We do not know any more blessed country than the Great Britain, to ask for an impartial, objective and equitable assessment. I am convinced that Brussels is not of the same opinion, but it is another story. In terms of the Albanian context, and in terms of the needs that we have in higher education, this opportunity and this cooperation with the British Agency of Quality Assurance is truly a historic opportunity to start properly a completely new but absolutely vital process for higher education, which is the accreditation process of universities.

Last but not least, I want to thank our dear friend, the Ambassador of Great Britain, who has been a precious help to ensure a successful intensive communication with the British agency, which, to say the whole truth, went away terrified after the first visit, and hadn’t the minister and ambassador insisted, we would have hardly seen them again in Tirana. This for the simple reason that the level of performance standards as we found it, was beyond the power of imagination of British experts, to be able to enter the accreditation process. Their pledge before they left was to make sure first of all that higher education institutions would implement laws that we have passed, and then have these institutions accredited.

This was of course our target and our conviction, but the words of British experts were a very strong incentive to go through a process that saved tens of thousands of parents and young people who today do invest any longer neither their money nor their energies in the unknown direction of those sort of holding companies which, I hope, have given their farewell once and for all. Many thanks.

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The Ministry of Education of Albania and the Agency for Quality Assurance in the UK signed today an agreement to assess and certify the quality of higher education institutions.

The agreement was signed in the Prime Minister’s Office by the Minister of Education Lindita Nikolla and representatives of the British Agency for Quality Assurance, one of the most renowned agencies in this field in Europe and worldwide.

The purpose of the agreement is to carry out the evaluation and certification of quality in a comprehensive and integrated way, and on the same standards and procedures for all Higher Education institutions currently operating in the country, oriented towards European and international standards.