The management of the educational institutions remains a challenge to the country’s education system, with a series of existing issues in educational management, mainly related to governance, effective schooling and performance indicators and conditions.

“The ambition to build a system where nobody can be appointed as school principal without undergoing adequate training on education management through this system and without being licensed for this, just like every teacher should,” the Premier said in his remarks.

“I think that the situation in the education system and perhaps in every other sector is similar to the situation with the reconstruction process. As a matter of fact, the ruins of the past have been actually removed. And I mean not only physically, but also in terms of the entire system. A ruin of the past was the teachers’ appointment was done high-level officials, through party affiliations or bribes. Such a ruin has been already removed, though there could still be sporadic cases that I don’t rule completely rule out, yet the system is absolutely different, via the ‘Teachers for Albania’ portal, systematic tests and the teachers’ selection that is done based on the classification. Meanwhile, we face a big problem and we have somehow failed to make progress on this issue as we have done in other areas and this is the school management problem. This is not actually case with you, but in a nutshell the school management hasn’t changed. Schools management remains archaic in terms of know-how and management skills in schools,” the Prime Minister said during the conversation. “To this end, we have launched the compulsory preparatory training program for certification of school principals, a brand new experience in Albania and with a curricula and foreign professors, who have been involved in such projects in other countries, and the continuing education for teachers is now an independent programme that will take time to yield its initial results. All school principals are undergoing the process which is a compulsory process of training so that they can be qualified and certified for the job. Our ambition is to build a system, where one cannot be appointed as school principal without having the adequate training through the system and without being licensed for the job, just like every teacher should.”