Kosovo needs 142 school objects for whole day learning

Minister of Education, Science and Technology Shyqiri Bytyqi today introduced the existing state of school spaces throughout the country, as well as the areas needed for the implementation of whole day learning.

Minister Bytyqi has said that within the short term, they have managed to identify the lack of school objects throughout the country, which is a very important goal of starting a whole-day teaching to have a higher quality of education.

MANT intends that in the next year, a full-day school will begin in those schools that have conditions, but, according to the identification of this ministry, the country will also have to build 142 school objects and 85 annexes, of them elementary schools, high schools and physical education halls that are 218 euros across Kosovo, while the investment value of all is about 371m euros.

We're saying that the whole-day lesson started in schools where there are conditions for starting and not in schools that have no conditions, because in those schools where there are no conditions it will cause damage to the students, but we need to start only in schools that have conditions to realise the whole-day learning. Whether there will be increases in quality is not questionable, we haven't discovered the whole-day lesson, this is a practice that applies to most European countries and has shown extremely high results. It will undoubtedly yield results in us too. But what remains a major challenge that a commitment from the government and various donors is needed to find a way to achieve this lack of schools we have in Kosovo”, Minister Bytyqi stressed.

STAT's minister says the entire day teaching programme is aimed at establishing quality in pre-school education -- a practice, implemented even in European Union countries.

“Full goal, we have said that it is to have an increase in the quality of education in front of the university, so it's one of the main factors that will affect the establishment of the quality of education and on this basis we've appreciated the need to know exactly how many schools Kosovo is lacking and where these schools are not to be an obstacle to the application of whole-day teaching”, the ministry noted.

Minister Bytyqi hopes to build these schools with support from the World Bank or on soft loans, and plans to have an international conference with donors found ways of financing the cost needed for schools.

The head of the Department of Infrastructure at the Ministry of Education, Fadile Dula, stressed that the education sector in Kosovo has about 1 000 and 175 school buildings, where most of them work in two shifts, but there are also schools that work on one shift, but these large areas are divided parallel and are located in rural areas.

She said that because of two shifts of work, it's over population in urban areas, which has been done loading schools in urban areas.

At this total value in the Pristina municipality, which is about 44m euros for the Pristina municipality, physical education halls also entered. In Pristina, 6 and 600 square metres have been missing for sports fields or six physical education halls.

We need 43 school objects and 28 annexes and 35 physical education halls in total Pristina. The cost of investments for this region is 98m euros. I only left one region and only one municipality to see how we got to all other municipalities. The I Mitrovica region that falls 27 school objects and seven annexes, I Gjakova 14 objects and nine annexes, Prizren region 20 objects and 14 annexes. We have also gone to the regions of Peja, Gjilan and Ferizja where 142 school objects and 85 annexes should be built, out of them elementary schools, high school and physical education halls that are 218 across Kosovo. The investment value of all of this is around 371m euros”, Dula stressed.

She added that the Technical School “28 November” in Pristina is one of the schools working on two student shifts to this school of 1,000 and 17 and the number of existing classes is 20. This school is also needed by 14 learning rooms, and the total area is 1,000 square feet [130 sq m]. The area needed at the cost of the market has a market cost of around 400 euros per square metre, and the total value needed for investments has emerged.