Between the new curriculum and the smell of paculus (Photo)

Climbing up the hill on the concrete steps that break apart at every step and the narrow path through the semi-destroyed trunks, such as a maze, brings to the top of the mountain from which the village school is seen.

The population in the remote mountainous village of the Gjilan municipality, the last on the eastern Kosovo border line with Serbia, is in constant decline.

In 1982-83 it is a large building, old and surrounded by mountains. Rare are the houses observed on the horizon. Even fewer are the homes where villagers once populated.

Within it, the school holds two different worlds, knowledge and survival. The school is divided into two by an internal wall, and half of it is exploited as home to Vehid Ibrahimi's family, and the other half is used for the learning process for the remaining eight students of the village of Muqiba.

For more than four years, Abraham has usurped two of his school classes as a living environment. His home was burned by an electric accident in 2013. Having no other option within a short time after the accident, the father of three children as a single and broken school glass to use its facilities as a roof over the head of the five - member family.

I don't have a salary”, says Ibrahim. I've been an activist for 20 years and I'm not paid. I have no condition to build a new house”.

Abraham walks inside the school building. The cobbles fall on his wrinkled forehead, and the thin body sways like lis in the wind. His black jemper contrasts walls carved from the limestone white layer. Corridors smell of sausage and meal.

After taking off shoes, as if the habit requires it before entering home in Kosovo, socks will violate the blue carpet with yellow flowers and red flowers.

I don't have the conditions to live right”, says Ibrahim.

I don't have toilets or drinking water here. There are no doors here. It's hard to live winter because it's very low temperature, because it's a big space this”, says he found himself inside the strange shelter no more than 20 square meters.

The flames boil inside the cortor with wood that Abraham cuts off from the mountain visible from the fragile windows from which the cold blows. Red - and - white Sofrabes for a little bit seem to indicate that there are basically two school banks that form the surface of the dining table. Four chairs, even those borrowed from the school, stand around. L-shaped along the two angles of the room lay couches and coughs, each in a pattern different from the other, but all watching from the big television, the only object that links its vital environment to modern technology.

The father of three children, when discussing his case, relates that he was not stumbled by officials of Gnjilan or by the Ministry of Education to settle in village school.

He says the mayor of Arim in Gjilan himself had known about his case.

I had [contacts] with him many times. And I've told him, and he's been in my condition for days, and he believed that the Communist [Gnjilane] Assembly would make a choice as soon as possible. I don't know that this is going to happen, so four years, five, I'm going to live in school”, he said.

Yet, Ibrahim says that no solution to his family's residence has been shown so far.

That's what happens. The village's local community, residents of the village of Muqibabe, have made three-four calls to the head of the Municipal Assembly, Mr. [Pray] Haziri. They have signed the signatures for help that a house with me built in the village. And so far it's happened when I was”, it shows between the suffering Abraham.

The back of the school where his family lives is a special gate that serves as an entrance to the object. The corridor and classrooms are noticeably colder compared to the heat produced by Abraham's cofator. The smaller classes that accommodate mostly ten students do not have functional doors, and any air movement seems to risk getting rid of the country.

The gray walls of the classroom are decorated with pictures and paintings of students. Alphabets and numbers are written with foam on the green board. On the table, in a dusty frame the pale portrait of Albanian national hero Skenderbeu leads over the classroom. A grey counter stands on one angle.

Though a wall of planks separates from the family of Abraham, the two sides seem to be separate from the other.

I, for myself, if there are classes, leave school, go to the mountain. It's a problem to hear that it's a big noise”

On the other hand, even school officials have their complaints.

His presence at school is an obstacle because he prepares food, cooks, bakes, and those winds are non-stop there, come out into the school corridor... with the smell of schools, like the smell of paculite, onions and only naturally presents the obstacle”, said school director Fatmir Latifi.

According to Latif, the family of Abraham uses other parts of the schoolwork. He also uses the bathroom, outside the schoolwork, which is for students”, says Latifi, indicating later that the energy expenses used by the Ibrahimi family are paid from school.

Even though the municipality of Gjilan has already been aware of the housing problems of the Ibrahimi family, Bardhil Syla, municipal education director, said there is still no possibility of resolving this situation.

He even considers that the attitude of this family in the school object does not present obstacles to the prosperity of learning.

I believe that the municipality will soon take care of this family's residence by turning it away from school item”, Syla explains.

While the School of Moula Idriz Gjilani faces such difficulties, all of Kosovo faces the consequences of low test results P ISA [the International Programme on Students Rating].

In the latest test held in 2015, Kosovo ranked last in the Balkans, the last in Europe and third place by the end among 72 countries participating at the world level.

However, former Prime Minister Arsim Bajrami has voiced confidence that PISA's results will improve dramatically at the end of his mandate.

This situation reflects the situation 2010, 2014, the period before I came as minister, and I'm sure that the assessment P ISA 2018 will rank Kosovo not only at the same level as the region, but also at the level of the European Union”, Bajrami said.

Bajrami considered implementing the new curriculum would mark a major turn in the quality of education at the country level. But on the other hand, civil society representatives consider the new curriculum nothing more than a political facade that, according to them, will not bring substantial results to quality.

“We are concerned about the fact that teachers are not well prepared to implement this [new]” curriculum, said Besa Sahin from the Educational Association, adding that, “Kurricla has not been attached to the school text, nor to students, nor to teachers, and as such will not be able to produce better results than the curriculum we've been doing so far.

In addition to severe conditions, the small number of students and the housing of the Abraham family now faces the challenge of implementing the new curriculum. But its director Fatmir Latifi and teacher Avni Maliqi do not consider this new educational methodology problematic.

The “is pre-preparation, must be applied as with one student, as with ten. As they are, we also work”, Maliqi says in short, somewhat satisfied that he was not asked again for the family's life of Ibrahim at his school in Muciba.

In the four years that Abraham resides in his home school, he conveyed a central government and a local government that failed to make a housing solution.

But nothing has changed.

It's hard to live here when there are teachers and students at school”, he says. There's a lot of noise, sometimes I think it's better to live in prison than that.”

On 4 September, the doors of all schools in Kosovo opened for the start of the new school year, time that, apart from others, brought a new education minister and could bring a new mayor.

But Abraham has lost hope that changing new political figures will bring a solution to his problem.

Thundery clouds, like the walls of the school and the hair of Vehid Ibrahim, have covered the sky above Muqibaba.

The look under the dusted floor dusted him and the expectations that one day he would not be obliged to hear “the elementary school lessons he had turned his back on decades earlier.

The green around the building will soon fade, and the trees will drop their leaves.

When the snow covers the mountains, Abraham's court will continue to face the cold that will try to get in through the thin glass of the school windows.

And so the school's unpaid guard will continue to survive with the family, boiling the backyard and breaking the monotonic with a spoon-craping in the glass tea glass, the same object that authorities expect students to prepare for PISA's next test.