The Education of Macedonia - Interview with Ljubica Grozdanovska of BID Consulting, Macedonia

Until recently and for five years, Ljubica Grozdanovska worked as a journalist in Macedonia's best-selling daily newspaper, "Dnevnik", covering issues on every level of education in the country. Three months ago, she became correspondent for the prestigious Czech e-zine Transition Online (TOL), again covering topics in education. Ljubica also works at the Faculty of Journalism in Skopje as a junior assistant. Recently, she co-founded "BID Consulting", where she serves as a market analyst, business and PR consultant.

Q: Some observers say that education in Macedonia is being revolutionized - others that it is undergoing a chaotic upheaval. Can you identify for us the major changes (private education, financing, major legislation, etc.)?

LG: The extension of primary education to nine years, the provision of a PC to every student, the Law for Higher Education, and the construction of schools through public-private partnerships are some of the big projects in education announced by the current Government. However, their implementation in practice yielded varying outcomes, sometimes deviating from the expected ones.

The implementation of the concept of nine-year long primary education started on the first of September 2007. Consequently, two generations of pupils enrolled in the first grade: those five and a half years old and those seven years old. Parents were more than confused.

According to the revised Law of Primary Education, children who are going to be five years and eight months old by the end of the year have the right to enroll in first grade. Therefore, some children were forced to wait till the next school year just because they were going to reach the proper age only in January.

The Macedonian constitution doesn't allow private elementary schools to be opened. Thus, parents can't choose teachers. The school does it for them. Another irony of the model of the nine year long primary education is that the pupils who are seven years old this school year and are in the first grade, will, next year, skip the second grade and automatically go into the third.

In a situation in which many schools in the country have ruined roofs, no toilets, no secure electricity wiring, the Government last year announced a project "PC for every child". Despite the grandiose announcement that computers will at first be installed in all high schools, at the beginning of this school year only three high schools were so lucky. By comparison, six or seven years ago, almost all the elementary and high schools in the country received a few PCs each: a donation from the Taiwanese Government. The equipment has soon become the target of robberies.

One of the major obstacles is that teachers - especially the elderly ones - are computer-illiterate. Another major problem is that in Macedonia, for a few years now, there is no model to measure the knowledge of students after they had finished elementary, or secondary school. Because of that, around 95 percent of the students that graduate from elementary education as well as from high schools, are straight A students. If this tendency continues, the predictions are that till 2010 all students in Macedonia will be straight A students.

3. Macedonia is a multi-ethnic country. How does its education system cope with this diversity (quotas, segregation, teaching in minority languages, etc.)?

LG: The constitutional right to study in one's mother tongue (in Macedonia, students study in the Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish and Serbian languages) and the influence of the conflict in 2001 caused and still are causing segregation among students. If this right initiated the segregation, the conflict and the prejudices it gave rise to increased the division among students - between Macedonians and Albanians, and in the past two years, among Macedonian, Albanian and Roma students.

Parents are also guilty because they fear that their children are not safe in an environment which includes "others" and they pass on their fears to the children. This is especially obvious in the capital of Macedonia, Skopje and in the cities in the western part of the country, where the majority of the citizens are Albanian.

For example: if Macedonian and Albanian students attend lectures in the same school, they usually go in two shifts. There is segregation among teachers too, although they deny it in public.

Two years ago, the Ministry of education made changes in the history books. This caused the lecture model to be altered: Macedonian students learn about Macedonian national history, Albanian students - about Albanian national history. When time comes for the Albanian students to learn something about the Macedonian national history, then usually a Macedonian teacher does the teaching and vice-versa.

Since the last school year, there is also segregation among Macedonian and Roma pupil ...