Albania

While Albania’s economy continues to grow, its total government expenditure is the lowest in Southeastern Europe with only 3% of its budget allocated to education and 3.7% to health. Yet its child labor rates are the highest in the region with almost 30% of boys and 20% of girls working before the legal age. Despite its challenges, Albania has made significant efforts to improving its education provision.

• The current SWAP represents a unique opportunity to put the system into action as well as to enhance cooperation among education partners.
• Significant resources were raised for education from the World Bank Project – Education, Excellence and Equity. Much of these resources went to supporting the National Teacher Standard and the scaling up of the Hidden Dropout Approach.
• The government invested heavily in EMIS and thus has created the grounds for better information to be provided to schools and the MoES.
• The MoES has taken initial steps to prepare a national policy based on UNICEF’s Child Friendly School pilot project.
• Regional EFA plans have been developed (Kukës and Korça Regions) in the framework of decentralization processes to act as concrete tools for strengthening the regional dimension of the National Strategy for Development and Integration.
• The government has introduced a new environmental education program into the primary school curriculum (grade 1-5) that uses ‘child to child’ methodology in an attempt to promote sustainable development.
• The government approved a strategy to increase the access to and improve the quality of preschool education across Albania.
• The MoES, in cooperation with UNICEF, is promoting the ‘Albania Reads’ initiative to improve the country’s performance in reading, which trends show as its weakest subject.

Bosnia i Herzegovina

Secondary education in Bosnia and Herzegovina is as well free. It is provided by general and technical secondary schools, where studies last for three or four years. Most children in Bosnia start school when they are six or seven years old and finish high school when they are eighteen or nineteen. Students who have graduated from general secondary schools (Gimnazija) get the Matura and opt to enroll in any faculty or college after passing a qualification examination given by the institution while students who graduated from technical schools get a Diploma.

Bosnia Herzegovina’s higher education system comprises eight universities (University of Sarajevo, University of Tuzla, University of Banja Luka, University “Džemal Bijedić” of Mostar, Sveuciliste Mostar, University of East Sarajevo, University of Bihac and University of Zenica) with some 90 faculties, which are treated as higher education establishments, and art academies. University degrees are acquired at the faculties and arts academies. There are 22 private higher education institutions and the law on higher education (passed in July 2007) treats private and public higher education institutions equally. The adoption of the State-level Framework Higher Education Law, which was initially put into parliamentary procedure in spring 2004.

The primary goal of the educational reform in BIH can be summarized in two words: quality and modernization. Despite the progress made, creation of an inclusive, non-discriminatory education system is still a challenge for the ongoing education reform. In BIH, separate education systems are based on political and religious/cultural division promoting ethnic separation and distrust. As a result of the complicated administration structure established by the Dayton Peace Agreement, the education system, likewise other social sectors, is governed by 13 ministries, each having its separate legislative and executive roles as well as unbalanced budgets.

Croatia

The degree of integration between governance structures of education and the labour market from the national to the local level is low and labour market actors are not adequately prepared, especially at local level, to work in partnership and design meaningful integrated policies (Crnković-Pozaić, 2009). Although the Croats have experienced several wars in the century, they have still been able to surpass these impediments and continue on with their established educational system. Primary and secondary education is essentially free because it is mostly sponsored by the Ministry of Education of the Croatian Government. Higher education is also mostly free because the government funds all public universities and allows them to set quotas for free enrollment, based on students’ prior results (usually high school grades and their result at the set of exams at enrollment). However, due to the low wages that teachers are being paid there are shortages of teachers throughout Croatia. This shortage of teachers has become an ongoing problem due to the numerous amounts of educational programs in Croatia.
 

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