Aiming for better access to education for Kosovo's minorities

While the majority Albanian population grumbles about the quality of education in Kosovo, minority groups struggle with additional difficulties, from a lack of curricula and relevant textbooks to no access to education at all in their language.

Sehadin Shok from the OSCE Mission in Kosovo’s Communities Unit says this is the case with the Gorani community. "Over the last four years, they have faced serious problems putting their children through even primary education," he says. There are about 8,000 Gorani in Kosovo.

Falling through the cracks

In 2003, the Kosovo Assembly adopted a law providing for primary and secondary education in minority languages. The law, however, did not provide for a curriculum for Serb or non-Serb students being educated in Serbian.

"Until 2003, our children were schooled in Serbian and followed Serbian curricula," says Mursel Halili, a Gorani teacher and community representative.

Kosovo’s Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG), the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in particular, want the Gorani community to switch to Kosovo’s mainstream curricula, though neither curricula nor books in Serbian have been developed.

"We continued teaching our children according to Serbian curricula," says Halili, "so they would not miss years of schooling and could continue on to higher levels of education here in the region."

The Ministry, however, has been reluctant to allow the use of Serbian curricula, and for the last four school years, Gorani students have been unable to start the school year on time. They have even faced threats to shut down their schools in 2007.

The OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, Knut Vollebaek, recognized the problem during his visit to Kosovo from 10 to 15 January. "The failure of Kosovo’s institutions to develop a Serbian language curriculum is having a detrimental impact on Gorani children," he said.

"The problem of Gorani children now being pressured to follow the curricula developed for the Bosniak community or to enrol in the Serb parallel education system, is one that needs to be addressed," Vollebaek added.

Finding a solution

To help defuse the tension, in November 2007 the OSCE Mission organized education roundtables to raise awareness among partners, in particular the Ministry, on the needs and problems of minority communities.

"Our aim was to identify recommendations and assist the PISG in developing measures to integrate minorities and preserve their cultural identity," says Shok. The recommendations will be available soon.

Halili says the roundtable with the Gorani community was very positive. "We discussed the problem openly with Ministry representatives – we made our proposals and discussed possible solutions," he says, adding: "The fact that the primary schools are still functioning is a success."

Lacking textbooks

Other minority groups face problems as well. Bosniak and Turkish students, for example, lack textbooks in their languages based on mainstream curricula.

"No textbooks are available for the fifth grade, while those for grades three, four and eight are still being prepared," says Shok. "As for secondary education, no curriculum textbooks are available.

"For the grades where books are available, their quality is often poor. The translations from Albanian have been done by people who speak the languages well but don’t know the subjects, such as physics," he adds. "As a result, the terminology is often wrong." To help fill the gap, in 2007 the Mission donated 2,800 books to Prizren City Library for Kosovo’s 25,000 Bosniaks.

The Mission has also helped Kosovo’s most marginalized communities – Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian – to improve their education. Thanks to Mission-supported catch-up classes, 1,800 children and teenagers were able to reach the level of education required to enrol in mainstream primary and secondary schools.

Parallel education for Serbs

While these communities struggle to get better education conditions, Serb students attend a parallel school system under the authority of the Serbian Government’s Ministry of Education and Science. The Mission has developed a number of projects to help these schools as well.

For example, it has helped to modernize the electrical engineering lab at the Technical School in Mitrovica North, installing new computers, printers, scanners and electrical engineering equipment. It also buses Serb students to school in the Peje/Pec region, securing their freedom of movement.

Kosovo’s newly-formed Government faces a number of old problems. "The OSCE Mission is hopeful, however, that the leadership will pay more attention to the needs of minority communities and their education," says Shok.