Shqip
English
Tirana, 11 September 2018 - The Albanian Coalition for Education (ACE), with the support of the Global Campaign for Education, achieved a major success of the Campaign "6% for Education". The ACE campaign that started in 2016 required that the Albanian Government increase investment in education to make it qualitative and affordable for all children and adolescents. Thanks to the ACE campaign, starting from this school year, 190 thousand primary school children attending compulsory public education will receive free schoolbooks, while the Government has promised that by 2021 all students aged 6-16 will benefit from free schoolbooks.
Although these developments are very positive, the state budget and investment in pre-university public education in Albania remains very low. Compared to the EU average of 5% of GDP, Albania spends around 3% of its GDP on education.
It was the year 2014, when ACE requested for the first time that teaching assistants for children with disabilities be employed in public education to facilitate their integration in the compulsory education. Within that year, the Ministry of Education hired 310 teaching assistants to support about 4000 children with disabilities.
In support of this, during 2017, ACE and its members advocated for the increase of the number of teaching assistants, who this year will be doubled by adding another 350 new assistants. This will have a positive impact on the education and treatment of children with disabilities attending compulsory public education. However, a lot of work needs to be done, as data shows that still some 64% of children with disabilities do not attend compulsory education in Albania.
ACE also has advocated for several years with the Parliamentary Commission for Education as well as through with the Ministry of Education to increase the number of mental health professionals working in the education sector. At present, there are only 347 psychologists working for 1600 public schools in Albania at an average of one psychologist responsible for 4-5 public schools.
The ACE Joint Report with the National Child Helpline in Albania (ALO 116) on the situation and availability of the psychosocial services in schools shared the concern that at least 30 percent of students had no information on the role of the psychologist in schools, while 20 percent of students had never met the school psychologist. Reports show that over 40% of children in compulsory education report being victims of violence and bulling at school. Faced with this situation, the promise of the Ministry of Education that will double the number of mental health workers in public education brings another important result for ACE's work.
ACE will continue to advocate for the national budget to count for 6% of Albania's GDP. This would provide much needed investment to raise the quality of free public education to improve school infrastructure, labs, classrooms, libraries for children and young people, while enhance teaching quality, effective career counselling and psychosocial support for children and young people in Albania.
