The National Congress on Education launched its proceedings on the first day of the new school year on Monday, with the event focusing on the quality education challenges and inclusiveness on the path towards European integration, in a bid to bring together many stakeholders of the education system, including the pre-university education, higher education, research, agencies, partners at a national and international level, civil society representatives and donors to education projects.

The Congress saw participation of the authorities of many educational institutions, lecturers, researchers, policymakers to discuss mutual cooperation and future challenges to deliver on a quality and comprehensive education system on the path towards integration in the European Union.

The Minister of Education and Sports Evis Kushi stated in her opening remarks that education should be on top of any agendas to recover in a fast-changing world.

 “In times of challenges and transformations in particular, education should top any agenda and combine policies with actions in order to recover and subsist in an ever faster-changing world,” Kushi said.

Education Minister Kushi, among other things, underlined that the education’s digital transformation is of particular importance.

“I am convinced that digitization should definitely be the key word in our policies, because it is precisely the digital transformation of education that mitigates inequality, and promotes inclusiveness in education. Thanks to digitalization and new online systems, we guarantee and facilitate student enrolment and admission, school-parent interaction, meritocracy and transparency for student university enrolment and admission, but also for the teachers’ recruitment,” she said.

 Prime Minister Edi Rama, who attended the plenary session, delivered a speech at the Congress:

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 “We are all Albanians, and united we stand with one single aim, the advancement of the Albanian nation,” Dervish Hima began his address as he opened the second  Congress of Manastir and a century later after the Congress of Manastir, a cornerstone of language and education as the most effective and strong weapon of the resistance and the nation’s progress, today we come together in this Congress, which is certainly a much more modest event in terms of its importance compared to the Congress of Manastir, but in its essence having the very concern about progress of the Albanian nation.

As the younger generation amazingly embark on the path of communication via the mobile phones, computers, web based platforms, the language faces more threats and danger and, on the other hand, this is not happening to our language only, it is happening to any language that today face this great pressure of mindboggling consumption, like never before, of words to communicate at a time when the distance has increased and where the exponential speed of the possibility of communication becomes ever more staggering and overwhelming.

I think it is up to us to find ways and through a broad dialogue process among us we should find ways to further strengthen the position of the Albanian in this language and communication chaos, where the world has been plunged into, definitely including us.

In the meantime, it is also up to us to seriously examine and establish the indispensability of the need to enhance education standards and match these standards with the framework of the best contemporary standards as a growing urgency. I repeat that this is a phenomenon affecting not only us, but many countries all over the world, including the most developed countries, because the teaching and learning process is equally under an increasing pressure of constant technological transformations.

One thing that is for sure is that like never before we now need to join our forces and minds outside Albanian borders, bring together all the minds in all Albanian-speaking territories, from the state territories of Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia or Montenegro to the Albanian migrant communities and the areas where Albanians have moved to, the globe’s most remote corners.

The new school year is to begin today and it is very good news that this school year begins with the joint first joint children’s reading and spelling book for beginners, the product of a shared commitment and work with the government of the Republic of Kosovo, the outcome of the contribution of a large number of authors, experts, and the outcome of a joint contribution from working teams set up to oversee this process and the outcome of a strong competition among various versions of the textbook and the publishing house that delivered a product, which might not be the best possible one, but it is a very significant outcome in nowadays.

What I was about to say is that it is really important for us to recall today where we started from and again, in this field too, I think that the same holds true. If we are to recall where we started from, we have come a very long way and the change has really been like night and day. We still have a long way to go, not because this is the way of saying it to sound good, but because this is the truth.

Parents were totally excluded from the system, but the schools serving as community centres is a concept being expanded throughout Albania, and, not only that, but the sense of a community with the teacher and not the politics being right at the heart of that community is further expanding and increasingly strengthening.

No comparison lines can be drawn between the current and the previous education infrastructure. If we now can afford launching the big school sports movement, this is a result of the fact that we have already built an educational infrastructure, featuring hundreds of school gyms. We lacked them!

The vocational education system has made important yet insufficient steps forward, as well as we have made significant yet insufficient steps with the higher education system.

Internationalization of our entire university system is a prerequisite. We very much hope that through political lobbying in the EU and the European Commission, also taking advantage of the new position as a country negotiating its accession into the bloc together with other Western Balkan countries, we will succeed in convincing the European Union to include the university systems of our countries in the EU’s university system.

Establishing the vocational colleges is another major target we need to pursue and deliver on.

Earlier today we just started with the launch of the 100 smart school labs and it is our ambition to equip every school throughout the country with such laboratories within this term in office, so that schoolchildren, starting with the first graders, are provided the opportunity to access the technology realm and based on the calculations and the best practices introducing IT classes in the first grade of the primary schools and teaching them information technology and communication based on the relevant curricula and the best European standards, as it is the case with the first 100 schools, will help pupils develop a certain computer and program coding skills and having a genuine computer coder means employment opportunities in tandem with education.

I would like to express my deepest respect to each and every teacher all over Albania, as they are a treasure whose value is much higher than the society currently values and of course much higher than we in the government currently value. However, we have increased the teachers’ salaries and will continue to do so in the future.

Thank you very much!