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Albania
Education under Communist Rule
Upon taking power in late 1944, the communist regime gave high
priority to reopening the schools and organizing the whole education
system to reflect communist ideology. The regime's objectives
for the new school system were to wipe out illiteracy in the country
as soon as possible, to struggle against "bourgeois survivals"
in the country's culture, to transmit to Albanian youth the ideas
and principles of communism as interpreted by the party, and finally
to educate the children of all social classes on the basis of
these principles. The 1946 communist constitution made it clear
that the regime intended to bring all children under the control
of the state. All schools were soon placed under state management.
The 1946 Education Reform Law provided specifically that Marxist-Leninist
principles would permeate all school texts. This law also made
the struggle against illiteracy a primary objective of the new
school system. In September 1949, the government promulgated a
law requiring all citizens between the ages of twelve and forty
who could not read to attend classes in reading and writing. Courses
for illiterate peasants were established by the education sections
of the people's councils. The political organs of the armed forces
provided parallel courses for illiterate military personnel.
In addition to providing for free seven-year obligatory elementary
schooling and four-year secondary education, the 1946 law called
for the establishment of a network of vocational, trade, and teacher-training
schools to prepare personnel, technicians, and skilled workers
for various social, cultural, and economic activities. Another
education law adopted in 1948 provided for the further expansion
of vocational and professional courses to train skilled and semiskilled
workers and to increase the theoretical and professional knowledge
of the technicians.
In the 1950s, the school system was given a thorough Soviet orientation
in terms both of communist ideological propaganda and central
government control. Secondary technical schools were established
along the same lines. In 1951 three institutes of higher learning
were founded: the Higher Pedagogic Institute, the Higher Polytechnical
Institute, and the Higher Agricultural Institute, all patterned
on Soviet models. Most textbooks, especially those dealing with
scientific and technical matters, were Soviet translations. Courses
for teacher preparation were established in which the Russian
language, Soviet methods of pedagogy and psychology, and Marxist-Leninist
dialectics were taught by Soviet instructors. A team of Soviet
educators laid the structural, curricular, and ideological foundations
of the Enver Hoxha University at Tiranė, which was established
in 1957.
By 1960 the system of elementary and secondary education had
evolved into an eleven-year program encompassing schools of general
education and vocational and professional institutes. The schools
of general education consisted of primary grades one to four,
intermediate grades five to seven, and secondary grades eight
to eleven. In October 1960, however, as Soviet-Albanian tensions
were reaching the breaking point, the Albanian Party of Labor
issued a resolution calling for the reorganization of the whole
school system. The resolution's real aim was to purge the schools
of Soviet influence and rewrite the textbooks. An additional year
was added to the eleven-year general education program, and the
whole school system was integrated more closely with industry
in order to prepare Albanian youth to replace the Soviet specialists,
should the latter be withdrawn, as they eventually were in 1961.
A subsequent reform divided the education system into four general
categories: preschool, general eight-year program, secondary,
and higher education. The compulsory eight-year program was designed
to provide pupils with the elements of ideological, political,
moral, aesthetic, physical, and military education. The new system
lowered the entrance age for pupils from seven to six, and no
longer separated primary and intermediate schools.
Secondary education began with grade nine (usually at age fourteen),
and ended with grade twelve. Secondary schools offered four-year
general education programs or four-year vocational and professional
programs, including industrial, agricultural, pedagogic, trade,
arts, and health tracks, among others. Some programs lasted only
two years.
The term of study in the institutes of higher education lasted
three to five years, and tuition was also free at this level.
Provision was made to expand higher education by increasing the
number of full-time students, setting up new branches in places
where there were no post-secondary institutes, and organizing
specialized courses in which those who had completed higher education
would be trained to become highly qualified technical and scientific
cadres. All full-time graduate students had to serve a probationary
period of nine months in industrial production and three months
in military training, in addition to the prescribed military training
in school.
Adult education was provided in the same sequence as fulltime
schooling for younger students, with two exceptions. First, the
eight-year general education segment was noncompulsory, and was
compressed into a six-year program that allowed for completion
of the first four grades in two years. Second, those who wanted
to proceed to higher institutes after completing secondary school
had to devote one year to preparatory study instead of engaging
in production work, as full-time students did.
Official statistics indicated that the regime made considerable
progress in education. Illiteracy had been virtually eliminated
by the late 1980s. From a total enrollment of fewer than 60,000
students at all levels in 1939, the number of people in school
had grown to more than 750,000 by 1987; also, there were more
than 40,000 teachers in Albania. About 47 percent of all students
were female. The proportion of eighth-grade graduates who continued
with some type of secondary education increased from 39 percent
in 1980 to 73 percent in 1990, with no village reporting a figure
lower than 56 percent.
A reorganization plan was announced in 1990 that would extend
the compulsory education program from eight to ten years. The
following year, however, a major economic and political crisis
in Albania, and the ensuing breakdown of public order, plunged
the school system into chaos. Widespread vandalism and extreme
shortages of textbooks and supplies had a devastating effect on
school operations, prompting Italy and other countries to provide
material assistance. The minister of education reported in September
1991 that nearly one-third of the 2,500 schools below the university
level had been ransacked and fifteen school buildings razed. Many
teachers relocated from rural to urban areas, leaving village
schools understaffed and swelling the ranks of the unemployed
in the cities and towns; about 2,000 teachers fled the country.
The highly structured and controlled educational environment that
the communist regime had painstakingly cultivated in the course
of more than forty-six years was abruptly shattered.
Data as of April 1992
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