Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the meeting with students who were ranked in the excellence of the global education barometer, PISA 2015:

“Give people either alimony or circumstantial work means, and they will live just a little bit better. Give them education, and they will change the world.” This is the motto we have written in the introduction of the 2014-2020 Strategy for the Development of the post-secondary Education.

Of course, this is something beautiful and easy to say, but it’s extremely difficult to do.

We decided since the very beginning to undertake a reform which other could never undertake because they were satisfied with giving alimony to people. Such were unfortunately all of the easy paths of the illusions that everybody could earn a degree, even fictitious degrees that were not only a big illusion, but also a major treason to the Next Generation.

Had the education reform, and all of the other reforms, been made 20 years ago, we would have been talking today about totally different things, and we would have had a totally different country.  But it’s never too late, especially when a whole next generation is in question. And if the generation of those who were born when the system changed can be considered a generation betrayed by the state, your generation, we want that the generation of the future will not only feel betrayed, but will have available means ensured by knowledge, and those means will give them increased opportunities to change the world.

Changing the world begins by changing the situation in your family, in the street where your home is, in your community. I’m sure that if I asked you about your family situation, the economy of your families, about the situation of your parents, there would be for sure students who would tell about difficulties that would be sufficiently an excuse not to go to school, not to study, not to have the highest results.

There are for sure students among you whose parents are unemployed. There are for sure students among you who have witnessed the hardships through which they parents have to go in order to meet the most basic family needs. There are for sure students among you who have all the excuses and our sympathy, not to be here as representatives of a new Albanian excellence.

Not only couldn’t the above reasons prevent you from fulfilling your obligations towards yourselves and your parents, but on the contrary they motivated you even more to decide today to make through knowledge a better future for yourselves, and a better present for your parents. That’s why your result is much more than just a school result. This is an extraordinary result of your individual determination to face with dignity and sacrifice, with unprecedented honest work the challenge of being tomorrow people who will decide about your present.

Let me tell you very frankly that you are an inspiration to me personally, and to all those in Albania who have chosen to dare and hope that success can be made in this country. Together we can make success!

For all those who have not chosen the hard path that doesn’t cross the coffee shops, doesn’t cross the spare time you make for yourself by cutting school, or that doesn’t cross the 1001 excuses and blames of other people for a situation that might not be optimal, this path crosses the iron will to succeed.

Personally for me, the results of PISA 2015 have been a reason to take a full breath and feel relieved about the fact that these results have proved our education reform to be the right thing.

Of course, the results of the reform, like any other reform, take time, they take years. The reform in education, as well, will take its time to prove itself in the real facts of life, beyond the school walls, to be an indispensable stimulus of a major economic and social transformation of Albania. But what you have proved is fantastic. It is fantastic personally for you, it is fantastic for all of us, it is a fantastic message to anyone who chooses to stand cross-armed and curse the darkness, instead of lighting a candle, first of all for themselves, and then for their families, their friends or for the community.

You are the example of what Mother Teresa used to say: “Light a candle, instead of cursing the dark”. And if each of us lights a candle, then there will be light. If each of us becomes a source of light, hence of knowledge and skills coming from knowledge, then our common life will be much more a light than darkness.

The previous results of this global barometer for measuring knowledge used to be more than discouraging. They proved how unfortunate the education policy was in this country, and what a misery it caused to the future of our students who maybe had the will but didn’t have a chance to give the maximum through their will.

The system change, which has been launched at every education level, has started to yield results. In 2000, Albania was second-to-last among the countries in this program, and in 12 years, from 2000 to 2012, it couldn’t progress even 10 places. Nine-to-last. Very far from all the countries in the region, without being able to compare to big countries like Turkey or Brazil that have made gigantic investments in education, and who are today behind us. Not behind me and the government, but behind you!

The fact that the ranking we were given has impressed all of the organizers of this barometer, and the fact that we have been greeted enthusiastically by some institutions and authorities that were surprised of the result of the Albanians, it’s an extraordinary stimulus for us. A stimulus to keep going on the path of education reform with full determination.

The opposition to the education reform does not concern its content. It’s an ideological opposition. The ideology of alimony. The ideology of quieting things down just to get by. The government ideology of Albania for 20-something years during which those who ruled didn’t think about the Next Generation, but thought about the next elections. They didn’t think about the future of every individual who was subject and object of a policy, but they thought they could buy time to that individual by means of alimony, and they told young people: Are you unemployed? Everybody go to university! We marked a negative world record, with 10 times more universities per capita than Great Britain or Germany.

Whereas, the other path, the one that would have brought in Albania many more productive investments, much more real employment, the path of vocational education was totally abandoned. A significant improvement of the results in the scientific skills of the students, especially in the mathematical sciences, is a direct result of the change of the school system and of all those measures that have accompanied the education reform. Of course, we still have very big problems. We still have many students who conclude their studies with poor results. But when we launched this reform, we hadn’t dreamt even in our best dreams that 56 young men and women from Albania would reach the top competing against young men and women from Germany, France and all over the planet. Moreover, many of them would be many times above the maximum level with their performance.

There’s no doubt that those who have daughters in Albania are very fortunate [8 out of the 10 first places are women]. I’ve known this for a long time, and fortunately everybody is learning this, little by little, that girls and women are the greatest power of reason and hope of this country. We live in a country where people used to shoot their gun when a boy was born, and mourn when a girl was born. But this whole process of transformations has proved that girls and women are ahead of boys and men.

I want to express sincerely my greatest respect for you and those like you, even though you are the best in this case, who inspire us and make us not feel alone, and try to prove that Albania can become a success, and that Albania can make success.

What we need is put people in the conditions so that they can express and embody their talent through their work. The very fact that we have here students not only from Tirana, but also from Gramsh, Pogradec, Kavaje, is meaningful. The reform has enabled the creation of a new consciousness in the teaching staff. Also because teachers have been relieved from the burden of hardships and foolishness of the old system. They’ve been relieved from over 600 meaningless textbooks, or from a teaching method that was totally exhausting and counterproductive. They’ve been involved in an ongoing education process, which has already started for the school principals.

We’re not at the end but in the very first steps of a process that will take years. But we are convinced, and these results confirm our conviction, that this is the path. It is very hard and very painful, and of course it has “its victims”. But it’s the only path.

There was a lot of fuss about accession to university. Surprisingly, all those who inspired the fuss didn’t think about the best, but they thought about the stress of the students who failed, instead of telling them that their lives didn’t end there, that on the contrary their lives were about to take a turn, and that they should be aware that there’s another path, that of crafts. Not everybody will become scientists, jurists or economists in Albania. The country needs many professions and crafts that are missing today. We keep complaining all the time that “there are no jobs”. There are vacancies in every business building from Zogu i Zi to the beach exit. There is no business, on both sides of the road that would tell you “we don’t have any vacancy”. On the contrary, there are 1, 2, 50 or 60 vacancies, but they are for skilled people, people qualified in certain crafts; they’re not for jurists with degrees that are fake or that have been purchased. This is the transformation that is happening, and you are the image of the qualitative content of this transformation.

I want to thank you endlessly for the strength of your example. You are a concrete example, physically present, with a name and surname, of the Albanians who prove that there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome in the road to success. They are proof that hardships are not an alibi to stay in the coffee shops, to complain and curse and to blame everyone, and not take on their responsibilities. On the contrary, they are reasons to fight harder, make more sacrifices, and finally succeed.

Over 40 Albanian students have been admitted this year to one of the best universities in Istanbul. It’s an international university, and five students of the excellence were admitted last year. Before the end of the year I talked to the rector of the university, who called and wished me for the New Year, and he thanked me for our students. He told me: “They’re the best”. And it’s not that some are better than some others. All of them are the best.

Do you know what the requirement to determine the names was? The requirement was: The best high school graduates, with social problems. No student in that group of boys and girls, has rich parents. They are students belonging to the middle or poor social stratum. Last year, the most distinguished student of that university was a girl from Kavaje, one of the three children whose parents run a kiosk. And it’s not hard to imagine the hardships of those parents to educate their children. When we granted her a scholarship, her father told me: “we have invested for the education of our children everything we could save. This scholarship is a reward for us, in a tough economic moment for us”. So, for this you deserve our greatest respect.

I thank the Minister who didn’t chose to inaugurate the new building of the ministry in a traditionally boring way, but she choose instead to make this inauguration together with you. This building has been transformed to serve you and all of the Albanian pupils and students.

Many people complain about the “facades, the offices”. I don’t know any wealthy country where dirty and ugliness reign, but I’m willing to let them show me. There are countries where beauty and cleaning have not necessarily brought welfare, but there is no country, no city, no community that live in the dirt, without public spaces, with ruined buildings, and welfare. Beauty is the promoter of welfare, it stimulates good energy, and it creates community. Abandoned public spaces with the excuse that “people don’t have food”, does nothing but reproduces penury and despair.

Enjoy the New Ministry of Education! I assure you that we will continue with determination to be by your side in every step, in every measure to implement the reform, and our concern will be to make the best feel well. So that the others will learn from the best, and they will also feel well.

Thank you!