PISA illiteracy is a threat to Kosovo's national security

Surroi: Good evening, tonight we will be talking with Dukagjin Pupovac, the man who has long symbolized the expertise of Education in Kosovo, Dukagjin, welcome!

Pupovci: Nice to meet you, Veton, good evening!

Surroi: We're opening this with two findings that I've drawn from the analyses that you've produced over time, especially recently.
The first observation is related to the fact that in the second half of the 20th century, Kosovo embarked on an education project as a state-building project, and somewhere in the 60s and 70s, we managed to halve illiteracy. And this is where the positive trend begins.
In the 21st century, we are consistently failing the PISA test, and it shows that we are dealing with a decline in the education system, namely in our educational capacity. 
Let's analyze these two processes, first this first one of state-building and I don't see anyone who would be a better interlocutor, because you went through socialism as a teacher, in transition, then in this part of liberation. You are from a family where the parents were also connected to education, to books... so let's start from the beginning.

Pupovci: Education in Kosovo actually began to develop with the beginning of World War II, during the Italian occupation, and the same trend continued after 1945, and it is very true that it was in the function of emancipation, first and foremost, which then resulted in the process of state-building and, as the number of educated people and levels of education increased, there was certainly also development in Kosovo. However, in a sign...

Surroi:...I'm interrupting you here too. The turning point, the critical moment of political turning point, is the moment when it is exceeded by more than half, that is, when we have more people who can read than people who cannot read.

Pupovci: So, in 1981, we had somewhere around 13% illiterates, if I remember correctly, maybe it was even less, 11-13%, I've forgotten the figure, but by 1981, when the last population census was conducted, which can be considered credible for that time, it can be seen that the illiteracy rate had dropped significantly, from 90 or so percent after World War II until then...

Surroi: ...even at the time of the constitutional amendments of 1968-1974, Kosovo had somewhere around 60-70%, I thought, of people who could read and write...

Pupovci: ...who can read and write, that's right, it's true and it usually went with the change of generations, because the new generations continued their education and simply could not be illiterate anymore. As for quality, I had said that at that time, PISA-type measurements were not done.
So, however, it's a little difficult to say that back then we had a very high quality, and then that, that quality has dropped... it has dropped a lot....

Surroi: ...we were satisfied with plenty, with reading and writing

Pupovci: We were satisfied. Look, our education system back then was, like that of all of Southeast Europe and the Socialist Bloc, a memorization system.
That is, a little bit there, more or less we assessed how much students were able to reproduce knowledge, and so on. PISA is something else. PISA actually requires the ability to apply knowledge in practice and I say that that knowledge was limited even at that time. 
However, there was a culture of reading and a much greater motivation of people to advance in their own education, something that I see as lacking in today's times, and this is primarily noticeable from the PISA results, where for example, in reading, 83% of our fifteen-year-old children do not reach that minimum reading level, the reading standard which in OECD countries is somewhere around 75%, so that they reach it, so in our country 83% do not reach it and the problem is that these results are getting worse, that is, it was better in 2015 than in 2018, it was better in 2018 than in 2022, I'm talking about these PISA cycles where Kosovo participated and this shows that we are not working to improve this or the work we are doing to improve it, the work we are doing to improve it is going in vain, right?

Surroi: That is, we had an elite in the 20th century that invested in education, had as much education as other socialist countries had or wanted to reach at least that level of socialist countries. Kosovo has another problem, because the occupation of Serbia happened, the suspension of autonomy at that time, the war and so on, and here we lose..., but nevertheless there is a political elite that says let's continue with a parallel system, if we preserve education, as it is.
Is PISA a product of the lack of a political projection for education?

Pupovci: Yes, the parallel system, or rather the situation of the '90s, has definitely left its mark on, how should I say, the degradation of the quality of education, that is something objective, because working in private homes, without basic conditions... But, I think that it was the only solution and it was a good solution, I believe that at a later stage, I will ask you something about this and you will have a more elaborate answer, since at that time you were also involved in those structures that made such decisions.

Surroi: .... I can answer even now...

Pupovci: I had kept the structure of your show, so I'm keeping this for myself... and anyway, I think that after the war, respectively, after the end of the war in Kosovo, we did not sufficiently appreciate the importance of education.
That is, we simply had to see that education makes us competitive or not competitive in the world, respectively in this region where we live, and simply not as much has been invested in education as it should have been, and by investment I do not mean only material investments, only budgetary funds, but simply also the commitment and work that needs to be done with other schools, in order to achieve a slightly higher level.

Surroi: I'm interrupting you now, because I have a fundamental disagreement here. You're speaking as an expert and saying we haven't invested, or we haven't seen the importance.
However, there are two elements within society. There are two elements that have seen the importance from a completely different angle.
The first is the political occupation of the education system, and like everything else, the political control of things.
The second is financial control, namely, the transformation of education into a profit-making enterprise, as you also have in your analyses, meaning that education becomes like a sausage factory, like other construction companies, with the same objective of creating money.

Pupovci: Now, the first one, which has to do with political influence, is really related to a certain determination among us that everything be controlled by the political elite, which is in power, and this has often had very bad effects, especially in the case of the appointments of school principals, and so on, who in a certain period have almost all been from the party that has been in power, whether at the central or local level, and often even elected without criteria.
I think that recently the situation has improved a bit in this regard.
Otherwise, regarding policies, I consider that it is not that we have not had policies, it has been more that they have not been implemented. That is, Kosovo has had an education strategy since 2002, when these competencies were taken over by UNMIK, that first ministry had created an education strategy, then another, and another, and another, but we have never gone even halfway through these strategies, let alone to the end.
It is not that it is not known what needs to be done. It is simply that those things have not been done. As for this profitable aspect, this is more related to some higher education institutions, which were created mainly between 2005 and 2010, in that period and have continued to work. It is true that there is a belief in the public that some of them operate purely on a profit basis, without much interest in quality, but we cannot say that the quality is much better in some of the public universities, right?
Even in some of them, not all, it is operated in the same way, although profit may not be a motive, but it is often a motive to transfer students so that the institution is attractive to new applicants.

Surroi: I took the second issue for this. For the first issue, it is interesting that the attempt for political control begins even before there is power in Kosovo, immediately after 1999 the attempt for political control of schools, as well as everything else, begins.
But, on the second issue, I saw the analysis of participation, that is, the percentage of public institutions in Germany and private ones, and also of non-public institutions, we are dealing with a different name, we are dealing with non-profit universities, non-profit public institutions, which are also most universities in America.
They are indeed paid, but they are not paid to create profit for their owners, because there are no owners.
Here we have, the percentage of for-profit universities is somewhere over forty, compared to public universities, which puts us somewhere in third world countries. And how can we have integration into the European educational system, if we have such a percentage.

Pupovci: Now this trend, first of all, is about higher education institutions, but there are also some pre-university education institutions that are for-profit, not all. First of all, I think that there should be clear quality criteria, and the Accreditation Agency is working on this. Now they want to function like that, as for-profit institutions, generating profit for their founders. This is something that is allowed by law, it is not prohibited, but at least there should be a system that controls quality so that those institutions cannot be, as you said, diploma factories, if they are functioning in the best possible way.
There is progress in this direction, so the number of programs in Kosovo's higher education institutions about 7-8 years ago was about 500 accredited programs, now that number has been halved, there are about 250 programs that operate, so a large number of programs, but also institutions, have been closed because they could not meet the accreditation criteria. Now with the readmission of the Accreditation Agency to EQAR in this European quality assurance network, of course this activity will have to be intensified and all institutions, both public and private, will have to be tightened, so that if they offer a program, the quality will be maintained behind that program. And naturally they will be, the Agency, under international observation and will have to meet these criteria.
And now, of course, there will be differences in quality even between institutions within Kosovo, but especially with institutions outside Kosovo.
I do not expect that our institutions will be able to produce the quality of Germany, because there, first of all, there is a long tradition, but there is also a unit, so to speak, predisposition, meaning a much better prepared staff, a much greater investment in education and research, and we still cannot reach such a level.
But here, to be honest, some criteria have been given, for example, only the University of Pristina has doctoral programs and there are relatively few of them, now a doctoral program has been opened at the University of Peja, that is, the Accreditation Agency has been quite strict in these, perhaps even since the end of 2018, when it was excluded from EQAR and ENQA, it has been quite strict in recent years and I believe that some order will be established here.

Surroi: An order will be established at the university, in general, but we will still face the same problem, and this is the problem of the structural definition of high school students, who understand less and less what they read.

Pupovci: This is very true and this is a matter that has been addressed, as I am saying, since 2002 in all the policies that have been developed by the Ministry of Education, specifically, and are official approved documents. 
We currently have the 2022-2026 strategy, which has been approved by the Government and it is very clear what steps need to be taken, for example, regarding pre-university education, something the state can do is external quality assurance.
So, we have the matura exams, and we have the national tests. And we know very well that these are mostly formal, right?
And now, if there were criteria there, then schools would function differently, because they would know that the student will one day take the achievement test, or rather the matriculation exam. And this is the role of the state, where the state can enforce.
How has the Accreditation Agency for higher education institutions tightened? Because we have a decentralized education system, that is, it is completely up to the municipalities. The municipalities themselves hire teachers, they decide on their training, the Ministry more or less has the licensing structure, inspection and what I am saying, external quality assurance in hand. Of course, the curriculum, textbooks, all of these need improvement and all of them have been established.
Is enough work being done in this direction? No! There is no work being done.
Simply put, this is now the reason why we have such a situation. Because if we had worked all the time, that is, on what the state has committed to, of course the results would not be lacking. But this has been constantly lacking in our country; sometimes it has not been taken seriously, because these are now linked to budgets, for example, every strategy of Kosovo is budgeted. And they say this is how much this costs, this is how much this costs, this is how much it costs, for example, 50 million is how much it costs to supply schools with technological equipment. 
This year, 15 million have been allocated for smart boards and it seems to me that the tender is still ongoing. That is, it's just that for 4-5 years, no work has been done in this direction and you can't just wait for digitalization in schools if the commitments that have been made are not respected.

Surroi: This is because... we allocate around 4% of GDP...

Pupovci: ...4.1% ...

Surroi: 4.1% for education, which is a low rate, in my opinion. But according to you, neither this rate nor these funds that are allocated are used.

Pupovci: To be honest, 4.7% is the EU average. Even that average is increased by these Nordic countries, because they have a high GDP that they allocate to education. In the region, we are champions in terms of the level of GDP, no one allocates more than us, maybe only Montenegro.
Otherwise, we're not bad. But, we have a large number of young people, that is, children involved in the system, so when this is divided per student, it really comes out less. It comes out less in this direction.
Therefore, there must be more allocation there. However, not more allocation just to say that the percentage of GDP is increasing, but really related to quality. For example, if you invest in textbooks, then at least make sure that the textbooks that come out are of better quality than the textbooks that we have now, because they are distributed in all schools in Kosovo and children learn from them.
If we invest in teacher training, which is not being done in Kosovo, then we should make sure that what teachers learn in training, they implement. Even in the classroom, that is, some kind of monitoring system for teachers in the classroom should be strengthened. This requires reorganization of school management.
A director cannot monitor, for example, 30-40 teachers of different profiles. Yes, in schools there are, they are called "professional assets", in English "department" would be the appropriate word: Department of Mathematics, Department of Languages ​​and so on... and now those departments need to be strengthened, as a kind of middle management, which can then control what teachers are doing in the classrooms, or help them in their work. All of these are now in strategic documents, but they are things that need to be done.

Surroi: There is, from what I'm hearing, a discrepancy between the idea that we can continue doing what we've been doing throughout the 21st century, meaning these twenty-five years of partial implementation of strategies or ritualistic production of strategies, and another channel of reality, which is this one of PISA. So, implementation in the form in which it has been done so far will produce the same result of PISA.

Pupovci: It could be worse...

Surroi: ... yes, it could be even worse, which means that we enter the second part, that is, this second quarter, the next 25 years, with an alarm, because we enter with children who do not understand what they read, lack critical thinking and lack a sense of abstraction, the abstraction that is needed for mathematical, philosophical and other thoughts, at a time when the technological revolution is taking place, that is, at a time when every educational system in the world is sounding the alarm, because the artificial intelligence revolution is coming.

Pupovci: Yes, more or less everything is known about PISA.
I don't know how much the public knows about the "ICILS" test, which is about technological skills. In 2023, our 15-year-old students entered the ICILS and we were ranked second to last, only Azerbaijan is worse than us. So, despite the belief that we have developed technological skills, it turns out that we don't. Because it's not the only technological skill to log into Facebook or Instagram or not, and navigate through comments. Other skills are the use of editors, such as Word, and so on, and it seems that we don't do so well there. 
And now I'm saying that we're not doing well with technology in schools either. That is, the idea since 2007, in those strategies, has been that every class in Kosovo, and we don't know how many classes we can't cover with the budget, should have a projector, a computer, so that the teacher can make the lesson concrete. To this day, this has only been realized in some municipalities or in some schools.
For example, in Pristina I know a school that has one or two smart boards in each classroom, and so on, we are talking about public schools. Now perhaps the number has increased, because they have made an investment recently and make no mistake about this. But now, when we are talking about artificial intelligence, it turns out that there is a huge discrepancy between the conditions that we have at the moment, before the conditions, both infrastructural ones, and those regarding technological capabilities and our ambitions to use artificial intelligence. That is, with artificial intelligence we must bear in mind that it is still under development. That is, GPT – “Generative Pretrain Transformer”, is something trained, it is “transformer” technology, but artificial intelligence is not able to determine whether the child is learning, is not learning or not? It provides information, it predicts. It has that phenomenon of hallucination, which still exists, it is able to produce information that is completely incorrect.
That is, artificial intelligence does it, and it is far from perfect.
So, I think at this stage...

Surroi: ..that's where critical thinking helps. If you don't have an opinion, you'll absorb it.

Pupovci: Our priority now is to improve reading and writing skills, I think. This should be our priority, because as you rightly said, students are probably a little rude, but that's the reality.
I'm softening it a bit, I'm saying that not everyone who reads understands, meaning they don't understand most of what they read.
They have trouble interpreting all of them, this is a reality. And this doesn't just apply to students, this also applies to generations that were students 15-20 years ago, because they graduated from this school, right? Some of them have certainly perfected this over time.

Surroi: Yes, this is scary.

Pupovci: Yes. That's where we have the fundamental problem and that's where we need to truly mobilize as a society.

Surroi: This is like taking Kosovo back to 1955-57... meaning, comparatively speaking, you will have, you have functional illiterates today because they cannot understand, at the level at which you had them in 1955-56.

Pupovci: So, classical and functional illiteracy differ, because the classical illiterate actually does not know how to read and write at all. The other one to a certain extent, that is, he understands things, he knows how to read and write, of course, there is no problem there, he understands them to a certain extent, but not to that extent, we are talking about 15-year-olds now, which is considered a certain minimum standard in the world according to PISA. Therefore, I think you are right when you say that this is alarming, we also need to improve here. And how can we improve? 
We really have everything planned, they just need to be implemented. For example, when reforming textbooks, changing textbooks, care must be taken that textbooks contain practical exercises, respectively, exercises that enable students to apply their knowledge in practice. Having such things, not having things that are only embedded in theory and do not cultivate such skills in the child, this is what textbooks are about. Then, I say these other things. Access to technology in schools helps a lot in concretization, then teachers can use PowerPoints, they can use various videos from YouTube to concretize things, but these are the things that need to be done.

Surroi: You are the Prime Minister of Kosovo, you have gathered your cabinet, and you will urgently decide on the three biggest crises that Kosovo is facing. Let's call them four.
The first is Serbia, meaning the unfinished relations and an unfinished conflict with Serbia. The second is the PISA test; the third is environmental pollution, namely the energy deficit of Kosovo that is related to it, and the fourth is, as far as I know, the problems of economic development. 
If you were offered these four problems as Prime Minister, how would you prioritize them?

Pupovci: But now, perhaps I would fail very quickly as prime minister, I believe, due to the lack of aptitude for that position, but I would certainly put these security issues first, since we're talking like that.
Even now I'm not talking about strategies, because I'm pretty ignorant there and I'm more inclined to agree with this or that, than to propose what should be done. Yes, when it comes to education, I really had put it as a second priority in this situation. And I think that...

Surroi: This is a matter of national security, actually.

Pupovci: And in the near future, yes, there is also the issue of national security, because in this way we actually develop our potential, whether we become attractive to foreign investments or not. But in conditions of political stability, yes, of course, on the other hand, we will certainly have to prove that we are a country that can be self-sufficient, whether it is competitive or not, we will need different profiles of experts for different products, and so on, even if we do not create them ourselves, I do not know who will create them for us. Therefore, this is also very closely related to the education system and I do not think that this second priority cannot be done in parallel with the first, because they are not closely related to each other. We are not required to regulate relations with Serbia, and then regulate education. That is not it.
This can be said for education in the Serbian language, which is a relatively small segment of our education system, but in general, I think this is an issue that we need to deal with and to be honest, we have had full authorization to deal with it since 2002. So, UNMIK has not intervened in education issues either, except for education in the Serbian language where they have requested that there be some special treatment, but again, I emphasize, it is not that segment that has prevented us from developing in this other field.

Surroi: Then, three immediate strategic decisions for education.

Pupovci: I consider that first the quality assurance systems should be strengthened. That is, first the issue of education inspection, the matura test, and so on should be regulated.

Surroi: Which will produce what?

Pupovci: Which should produce a much higher degree of responsibility on the part of schools, because schools are where students are educated.

Surroi: How is this reflected in the 15-year-old child, who cannot understand the text.

Pupovci: Well, for a fifteen-year-old child, it's a little late now, because a fifteen-year-old child, if we relate it to the PISA test, will enter the test and he will express that result of his nine years, but this is something that is reflected in a child who is 6-7-10 years old, because when he turns 15, he will have a preparation, in my opinion, much better than a 15-year-old child has today.

Surroi: What do you mean, I want to appoint an inspector, even a fifteen-year-old who is about to graduate, what will he do? Will he pass? He won't pass!

Pupovci: You see, if we prove that there is a credible matura exam system, schools, parents, and students will certainly be mobilized to pass the matura test, because they will know that it is a serious test, in which you cannot cheat, and if you don't pass, then you won't be able to continue your education.

Surroi: Even then, this would affect over half of the population.

Pupovci: I don't think this should be seen as a blow, this should be seen as awareness. It's simply something that can normally be done step by step. So, once you introduce discipline into the test, there's no cheating. Yes, those could be the requirements, respectively the most accessible questions for students, I'm not saying immediately go to those standards that put children in a situation where they stay out of school. Yes, the government, the system, in this case the government, after giving me that role, should in a way show its power in this direction, which is something that we can do and we will do well.

Surroi: That is, the Prime Minister orders that there should be a quality that approximates who? Slovenia?

Pupovci: Slovenia has worked hard to achieve this quality here. If we can approach Albania and Macedonia for a start, we are very good at this.

Surroi: So within your mandate as prime minister, you continue to say that you will reach...

Pupovci: ...I believe that the minimum required to reach the level of Slovenia is 12 to 16 years, while to reach the level of these countries in the region it could take over 4 to 8 years, of course we will have to regulate the system...

Surroi: One last question, regarding this first point, that is, the first strategic point. But, this would then guarantee that the child who starts school today, namely pre-education somewhere in the matura, will be close to the countries of the European Union.

Pupovci: Of course, if we are vigilant in implementing these policies, of course., Veto, said three strategic decisions and I only said the first one, or. This alone does not guarantee it, many other actions must be taken.

Surroi: Kosovo will insist that the quality of education of the child who enters school today, who enters school at the end of the term, at the end of pre-university education, be somewhere equivalent to...

Pupovci: ...with some European Union countries, which are a little bit behind in the European Union, like Slovenia that you mentioned, yes, or no. If we compare it with those countries, like Estonia and Finland, it may just take more time.

Surroi: Second point.

Pupovci: But the second point, I think, should have been simply technology in schools. It is something that we already have in strategic documents and I mentioned it and we have reason to worry about this, because even the skills of students, the digital skills of students have come out at an unsatisfactory level. Therefore, schools should also be supplied with digital equipment. So, each class in Kosovo should have, be it a projector, a smart board, a smart TV and a computer, so that there is a possibility of concretization, and there should be access to fast internet, so that work can begin with the greatest use of technology in the classroom. 
Then, as a next step, these are also part of the strategy, virtual classrooms such as "Google Classroom" can be created, I believe many people know how "Google Classroom" works, through which teachers can from time to time give students assignments to complete online, to submit online, so that they simply learn to use the system and develop their technological skills.

Surroi: So why then, if Kosovo has one of the highest internet penetration rates in Europe, children have technological devices, they have phones, they have computers, meaning they don't lack anything even in the poorest areas of Kosovo, they don't lack internet, they don't lack phones, they don't lack computers. Why then would it help to have internet in school, to have devices...

Pupovci: Because school works in a structured way, when a child is given a task to complete online, for example, through "Google Classroom" or a similar system, then they are asked, for example, to compile a document in Word, a table in Excel, and at a more advanced level even a short program code, and this leads to higher-level technological skills. 
For example, DESI is a research conducted at the European Union level, regarding technological skills, it also has a component for technological skills of citizens, and such a DESI was also conducted for the Western Balkans by the RCC, this regional mechanism based in Sarajevo, and there in Kosovo only 28% of people have a level of basic computer skills, that is, it is ... those basic skills are determined, what is needed in a day, except for using social networks, 28% have already come out, and here too Albania is worse than us. 
That is, this is a 2022 research that the RCC has published. So, what applies to the Kosovo level also applies to children. Is it visible or not? And I think that the school would encourage the use of technological skills, which we need so much and make it possible for us to face artificial intelligence in the future, and these things that are coming to us in the future.

Surroi: Third point.

Pupovci: And now the third point, we have an extraordinary reduction in the number of students due to demographic contraction. This has happened, especially in the last ten years, we have about 25% fewer students in pre-university education. This has resulted in a very large number of small schools.
The Ministry also has a policy, which has also not been implemented to address the problem of small schools. So, most of those schools should actually be closed, not for economic reasons, but to ensure a quality education for the children who study there. Because they teach classes with two or three students, where they are cousins ​​among themselves, and often due to the reduction they teach in combined classes, for example, first, second, third, together. This also represents an extremely big problem and is a reorganization that must be done.
The problem is that most municipalities want to do it and do it quietly, but they can't do it openly, because they lose votes. This work is very interesting. Because people, even if there are five or six students in the school, and they know that it is more useful for them, do not agree with closing the school because someone from them works there or simply want the village to have a school, however. I think that this rationalization of the school network would help a lot, because it would be easier to control the situation and it would be a higher guarantee of quality when the student learns in a social environment with an optimal number of children in the class.

Surroi: But, you're saying this has existed as a request since 2002.

Pupovci: To be honest, this came out a little later, because in 2002 we didn't have these problems. Back then, the number of students... one generation had about 40 thousand children. Now one generation has 20 thousand children, it's halved, and it's going to decrease.
That is, it will go here reduced all the projections and shows of the population, so this also seems to me somewhere in 2011 was included in strategic documents. This was included in 2011 that the school network should be reviewed and to be honest, some municipalities have done it calmly where they could, and there have been harsh reactions from citizens in such cases, but they have done it. However, this should be done in a more systematic way now, so that we have a stable network of schools and the state also knows where it needs to build, where it needs to repair and where it is not needed.

Surroi: And now this raises another question, which is, are we perhaps entering the phase where we are preparing children for immigration?

Pupovci: But now it will also depend on the development of the country, what you said is very true, I am just taking the example of secondary vocational education. For example, in secondary vocational education, around 25% of students are in health fields. We definitely do not need that many health workers.

Surroi: We are preparing nurses for the foreign market...

Pupovci: And yes, it is very well understood that a considerable number of them actually intend to go abroad and even health directions have been opened even in those towns, which do not have any place where practical work can be carried out... they have a Family Medicine Center or something simple, and there they educate physiotherapists or profiles that are very specific. And now, what happens. They are normal, this is also observed in higher education. There is a lot of demand for these directions, because in Western European countries there is a lack of these nurses, especially for palliative care, and this is also the reason why there may be emigration.
Of course, I do not see the possibility that the state can stop these emigrations, except with development, when people lose interest or become demotivated to emigrate, but, in the future, perhaps we should calculate that in addition to emigrations, we will also have immigration, which is currently not observed in our education system, but when such a thing happens to us, we must be prepared.

Surroi: A child from Bangladesh and Pakistan happens to be coming here.
If a child today, in the economic projection predicts that with the demographic decline that countries like Germany, Italy, and Spain are experiencing, will increasingly need nurses, why should he study, do well on the PISA test, and why not just be a future nurse?

Pupovci: Yes, nurses also need these practical skills, Veton..., nurses need them more, because nurses and doctors need to apply their theoretical knowledge in practice, they have to do with human life, especially when it comes to elderly people.
That's why I think that every young person, regardless of their profession, should have these basic skills of reading and writing, mathematics, science, and so on. Reading and writing is important for every professional in the field of vocational education. Even an electrician should be able to read an instruction manual.

Surroi: The question was provocative.

Pupovci: Yes, yes of course.

Surroi: Because the very fact that this question is being posed shows the absurdity of the situation we are in. If we are dealing with a national emergency, why has there been no political reaction to it?

Pupovci: It's very interesting. The reactions have always been after the results were published and after a month or two they have faded. So maybe this should have been a question for you, why is this Media Attention Cycle so short in our country?
For example, the media reacts at that moment, but then they simply silence that issue and you see that it is actually disappearing from the radar and of course politics then focuses on other priorities and forgets about it.

Surroi: Yes, and now that you asked me, I'm answering, and I'm giving you the lead from there.
There are two reasons in my opinion. The first: we are dealing with a general development of the shrinking attention span of the public, that is, we have entered Facebook and social media cycles, in which you move from one topic to another and it is very difficult to concentrate. And this is a global problem, it is no longer a problem... that is, traditional media, newspapers, reading a long text - if you look at the statistics of all the sites where they say this article takes seven minutes or eight more minutes to read, you always see that those that are seven or eight minutes are not read, those that are less than a minute are read. Or reels.

Pupovci: Yes, some media outlets are making fun of reading time. Reading Time, yes.

Surroi: This is the general one. And what is here, I think is... it identifies the country is that after a while there is a connection between the comfort of society and the level of knowledge. If in a political movement there is comfort with political results and it is connected with the level of knowledge of its citizens, then it is not that it will make a very large investment to change this, as long as these balances are maintained. At the beginning of this century, there was a full awareness of the people who occupied the educational institutions that this would not produce a positive result, it would produce a negative result in education, but they were not interested in the result in education, they were interested in the result of their political movement and if you put 50 professors in the university, if you give them other degrees, if you constantly advance them to master's and doctorate degrees, then you have created a dimension of benefit, which is special, yours, of your political movement.

Pupovci: Okay Veton, now in the late '80s you were part of these political structures, although they hadn't held elections yet, I understand, but somehow you were close to decision-making, if not in the decision-making yourself. 
Something happened to us then that actually put our education system at great risk, as teachers were expelled from schools, students from faculties and universities, and the so-called parallel system was created. I'm just curious, the political leadership at the time, the leadership at the time, what expectations did you have from the parallel system?
Do you know what we are getting into? Did you enter with dilemma, did you enter with determination, or in what way did you enter into it?

Surroi: This is a, this is a question that requires a long answer, I'm trying to give it in a slightly more condensed form.
The issue of dealing with this dilemma regarding education came to the Coordination Council of Political Parties of Kosovo, in which I was one of the participants. The chairman was Ibrahim Rugova.
And we met every week and during the week, several times, to address issues, strategic decisions, and education was a strategic decision and it was dealt with by Fehmi Agani, who was involved, and the point he insisted on was that we must preserve the education system at all costs, because it is the point that mobilizes the entire society.
At that time, I remember he mentioned four hundred thousand people, both students and teachers, who were involved in it. I was a little more radical at that time, and I insisted that we should mobilize, since there are four hundred thousand people, then parents and students should come out in front of the educational facilities, not allow them to be taken, and to physically protect them as much as possible, of course.
If this were to happen in the entire territory of Kosovo, then the level of mobilization of the repressive apparatus would be much greater than they had been able to do until then. This option, although we had said that we would protect the schools with our troops, this was one of the statements. There, immediately after the closure of the high schools, this option of defense, of general mobilization, fell. There was fear within the leadership that Serbia would use violence.
In fact, it had used poison gas in Podujevo. So we had a precedent and we had a fear within the leadership that this would happen again. Then, one of the options that came up was, and this was presented by Shkelzen Maliqi, was the idea of ​​"flying universities", as they were called, which Solidarność organized in Poland. After the universities were closed, or after the professors who were anti-government were expelled, then they organized these flying classes as they called them, where the professor would go to an apartment, the students would gather there, he would hold...

Pupovci: I think KFOS did something similar in Kosovo after 2000, something like Open University, but now I've forgotten...

Surroi: ...but at that time the initial idea was this. Then Fehmi Agani elaborated and said schools are not objects, schools are systems, and as long as we preserve the system... we preserve the professors, we preserve the students, then we have preserved education and we all agreed to support this conscious option, then they were also aware, even Professor Agani was aware that we would have a decline in the quality of education, but this was a matter of survival.
It was no longer a matter...

Pupovci: You didn't discuss the financing issue then?

Surroi: We discussed it, we discussed it, and from there came the idea that with 3%, our government in exile would develop a system to finance education, because it was clear that the moment we set up a parallel financial system, we would demonstrate our state capacity.

Pupovci: Okay, now I'm going back to 2006-2007, when you were part of the Unity Group. We simply don't know much about what was discussed within the Unity Group, but we did see the consequences, not necessarily in a negative sense, I'm saying this in general. 
In May 2008, two laws were approved at lightning speed: the Law on Education in Municipalities and the Law on Local Government. Both of them, in my opinion, were actually designed in such a way as to somehow suit the Serbian community, so that they would not have to worry about whether someone would interfere in their governance or not.
To be honest, this has cost us a lot in education in municipalities in Kosovo due to the fact that many municipalities do not have the capacity to manage the education system. Maybe it was ok for Serbian municipalities, but in our municipalities it has cost us and it is also somehow presenting itself as a limiting factor. But now I want to focus a little on education in the Serbian language. That is, this is enabling them, despite the fact that the law allows Serbian schools to use textbooks, curricula from Serbia, all of that, they actually do not even accept the advantages of this law. Even there, a question now arises: Will education in the Serbian language ever be integrated into the system of the Republic of Kosovo. How do you see this?

Surroi: Now there are three things related to this question.
The first was the concept of decentralizing decision-making in Kosovo in general, regardless of whether they are Serbs or not, it was an idea at the time in which I did not participate, but I know, I mean I heard from UNMIK that this actually started that municipalities in Kosovo should have as much power as possible, which I think is fundamentally a good idea.
Unlike Serbia, where municipalities have no decision-making, in Kosovo municipalities have a lot of decision-making, now with these new laws the mayor has even more, meaning he has a great decision-making capacity. But then this is interconnected, the process of ethnic decentralization has been something else and this is also reflected in the Ahtisaari Plan. There has been a request from the Serbian side from the beginning and this is an old idea from immediately after the liberation of Kosovo, that the Serbian municipalities somehow have a special connection between themselves and we have arrived at the idea of ​​a community of Serbian municipalities.
This idea was thrown out during the Ahtisaari process by the Serbian side and through carelessness of the group that dealt with it at the time, it was legitimized as an idea, then a great effort was needed to remove it from the agenda and to remove it from the agenda then we reached a level of asymmetry in educational rights, which is why we have, for example, in Mitrovica we have a university in the Serbian language and we have a separate health system, that is, at the level of a parallel hospital of the UCCK.
And now the third question, will there ever be integration of education in the Serbian language in Kosovo? I think there will be. There will be if education in Kosovo, Albanian education in Kosovo, is better than the one in the Serbian language, and I think that with what we are talking about, namely with technological penetration, with innovation, with the idea that we should be closer to Slovenia, this will be the magnet that will attract all of education towards reform.
The second issue is that education and health should be part of an agreement between the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia. The moment the Republic of Serbia recognizes Kosovo as equal, that is, the integration of Serbian education in Kosovo will happen with the consent of the Republic of Serbia when it sees that this is a part that helps Serbian education in Kosovo.
We are not at that stage, of course, but we will be in a few days.

Pupovci: Yes, I just wanted to add that Serbian language education continues to be financed by the Budget of the Republic of Kosovo, despite the fact that it operates within the framework of the Serbian system, meaning that a large number of employees in Serbian language education are paid from the Kosovo budget. And, in this way, are we actually encouraging or instigating this situation to continue, as it is?

Surroi: Yes, this is, that is, this is, where it is typical inertia, it is when inertia seizes a movement... here we are dealing with the fact that power after power has had an issue that should not be touched upon.
And we have a situation that doesn't make much sense, where Serbian children in Kosovo learn about our state Serbia, our king, our former king Petri, our former king Alexander, and they lose their sense of the reality of life where they are and, unfortunately, they build their own isolation.
The way to address this issue is not to try to integrate them into the current system, but to design the future transformative education system in Kosovo of which they should be a part.

Pupovci: In fact, there have been some steps taken by the Government, namely the recognition of diplomas from the University of Mitrovica and now there is a new regulation for the recognition of high school diplomas. Do you think that this can help, namely that at least, what is happening with the Serbian community is now also happening with a part of the Gorani community in the municipality of Dragash, do you think that some of these children, regardless of their ethnic affiliation who are within the Serbian language system, can be motivated in this way to switch to the official system of the Republic of Kosovo, then gradually attract others as well?

Surroi: Absolutely, because ultimately they should be part of... we are now dealing with open labor markets. And the Kosovo labor market should be interesting for them, even in this labor market, I am also thinking of the market of public institutions of Kosovo. It is the greatest advantage for a local Serb to be part of the institutions of the Republic of Kosovo than to try his luck in Kraljevo or somewhere else, where the market is narrower for people coming from abroad. The open labor market and the opening of these paths for employment will be, I think, transformative, as should be our insistence that Albanians in the Presevo Valley have access, the opportunity to enter the institutional market of the Republic of Serbia and other markets with the recognition of the documents of the Kosovo educational institutions.

Pupovci: Which is not happening, because Serbia is not recognizing those documents.

Surroi: This should be one of our priorities for the Presevo Valley, which is being depopulated, meaning there is a depopulation process, which Serbia itself is helping, even by closing the addresses of people who supposedly do not live there.
Thank you very much!

Pupovci: Thank you too, Veton, it was a pleasure.