Meet Kosovo NGO that received over 43m euros in donations for establishing the quality of education in Kosovo

A few days ago, the World Bank published the “Index of Human Capital Report. KCI]”, which issued the next bell for the serious state of education in Kosovo.

According to this report released by the World Bank, schooling in Kosovo is five years behind, so that 12.8 years of schooling in Kosovo are equivalent to 7.7 years in quality compared to countries that have normal standards.

The <x0 ..." Children in Kosovo by the age of 18 are expected to attend 12.8 years of primary, primary and middle schooling, but when their education years are rated for the quality of education, then their schooling is equal to 7.7 years, which means they have a lack of 5.1 years of education”, says the World Bank report.

In the same report, it is now said that a child born in Kosovo today will be only 56 percent productive when he grows up compared with a child who will have complete education and full health.

This report once again raised an issue that would only have to disturb everyone.

The education system in Kosovo, there has been no substantial progress, as envisioned in the million-strong strategies being drafted for this field.

Thus, improving the quality of education did not occur despite investments in training students and teachers, as well as equipping some of the schools with equipment from contemporary technologies.

Since after the war, Kosovo has accepted numerous international funds, dedicated institutions responsible for improving the state of education in Kosovo, as well as non-governmental organisations aimed at this.

But despite millions of donations, there is no note of improvement in the state of education in Kosovo.

This could also jeopardise the halting of these international education funds, which the chief of the EU Office in Kosovo, Nataliya Apostolova, had just warned.

The EU remains one of the largest donors for the field of education in Kosovo.

“Wanting to prove the commitment of Kosovo institutions to improve the quality of education in general would leave us no choice but to reconsider EU financial support. I think that this should become very clear that if there are actually no reforms that we want to expect, EU rules and procedures do not allow us to distribute funds”, she had stated during the presentation of an assessment report on the implementation of the Kosovo Strategic Education Plan in 2017.

One of the organisations that won millions of projects to improve the quality of education in Kosovo was the Centre for Education in Kosovo. [ Footnote] KEC].

This organization is even the largest absorber of donations to this field.

Founded since 2000, the nongovernmental KEC was focused on providing teaching training programmes, but in time besides training, the organisation expanded the field of work in four key areas, such as improving the quality of education, human rights, networking and participation in policymaking, as well as research in education.

For the establishment of the quality of education, this organization cites training programs for teaching and school managers.

“KEC has 68 programmes of this nature through which over 30,000 participants have passed. Most of these training programmes have been developed under international projects and accredited by August. Developing critical thought through reading and writing and Step-by-step are the two oldest and still most required training programmes the CEC offers, while their content has already been included in the Education Faculty programme”, says the description of activities on the organisation's official website.

On the basis of calculating the values of projects that are public, this organisation has so far managed over 43m euros to improve the quality of education in the country.

In addition, no value has been made public for some of the other projects that have been implemented by this organisation.

Thus, at the country level, KEC remains the largest absorption of donations for projects dealing with education.

Thus, they too bear some responsibility for failing to raise quality in the field of education.

On this issue, Periscopi has contacted the executive director of this organisation, Dukagjin Pupovcin, who has said that despite the fact that they are not satisfied with the effects of their work, they cannot take responsibility for the poor quality of education in Kosovo.

He complains their projects are being forgotten, shortly after the implementation phase is completed.

On the other hand, he has said that their projects, although of million value, have enabled them to work on only a small percentage of local teachers and students.

Over the last two years, we've equipped about 150 SMART TV classes, while 8,000 students and 500 teachers have provided free access to an educational video platform through which class learning can be developed and taught at home. There is no doubt that this is a modest contribution to improving quality through the use of contemporary technology. However, there are about 400,000 students in Kosovo, while we, in this case, have worked with only 2% of them. Then, we can send TVs to classes, give students and teachers access to the platform, train for its use, but using this opportunity remains a matter of their will and a matter of organization within the Chox1>, he said.

Periscopi brings you full interview with KEC executive director Dukagjin Pupovci:

We cannot take responsibility for poor quality education