Teacher Valbona Ibishi often has to teach English with only one student in the class.
This primary school teacher works in two schools in the Municipality of Podujeva - the northeastern part of Kosovo - to reach the norm of 20 hours of teaching per week.
"Three days I work in one school and two in the other", says the teacher, who has to go from the "Zahir Pajaziti" School in the village of Orllan to the separate parallel of this school in the village of Brainë - about four kilometers away.
The school in the village of Braine has only 25 students from preschool to ninth grade.
The fifth and seventh classes in this school have only one student each, while in all other classes the number of students does not exceed four.
Naim Bajrami, director of the "Zahir Pajaziti" School in Orllan, tells Radio Free Europe that this situation is not good for either the students or the teachers.
"It is also difficult for teachers. Working with a student for 40 minutes is not easy. Then, even the student does not feel good as in the company of 12 or 13 other students", says Bajrami.
Both he and his colleague say that, regardless of the circumstances, keeping the school open in Braine is of special importance, since, according to them, it is the only thing that is keeping the few residents of this area there. Braine village has about 12 inhabited houses.
In Kosovo, the decline in the number of students has been on an increasing trend for several years now.
The data of the Kosovo Statistics Agency show that in the school year 2020/2021 there were over 47 thousand students less than in the school year 2015/2016.
According to the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation in Kosovo, the reasons for this are different: from the drop in the birth rate to the migration of the population - either abroad or internally.
However, the decrease in the number of students has started to present problems in the functioning of the education system, due to, as it is said, the surplus of teachers.
MESTI informs Radio Free Europe that there is a surplus of about 2,000 teachers in various municipalities of Kosovo.
However, according to the ministry, "this does not mean that teachers are not engaged in the education system".
The Minister of Education, Arbërie Nagavci, in a session of the Assembly of Kosovo, held on April 28, has warned that the institutions will conduct an extensive research, in order to have a clearer overview of the problem.
"From next month [May], we will start a visit, cooperation and an inspection, to see the real situation in the municipalities, to see where we have a technological surplus, and where, on the other hand, we have a lack of the number of teachers" , Nagavci said.
MESTI has not announced whether this research has already started.
In Kosovo, the management of the pre-university education system is mainly done at the municipal level. However, MESTI leads the creation of policies that also affect this level of education.
What are redundant teachers?
The work of teachers in Kosovo is regulated by the Law on Pre-university Education and the Collective Contract, which the United Union of Education in Kosovo has signed with the Ministry of Education.
This contract explains the issue of redundant teachers or otherwise called "technological redundancy".
A teacher may fall into the category of technological redundancy in some cases, which include: closing classrooms or schools, which may then lead to the elimination of teaching/work hours that a teacher has.
According to this contract, if a teacher loses his job, depending on the work experience of that teacher, he is paid several monthly salaries, while the teacher waits for the creation of teaching hours for him.
By contract, the Municipal Directorates of Education are obliged to try to organize the teachers and complete their teaching hours. They do not have the right to open a competition for the same job position, without a teacher who is technologically redundant.
A teacher can be engaged full-time of 20 hours per week or half-time of 10 hours.
However, both MESTI and the United Union of Education in Kosovo say that, currently, there are no teachers with a regular contract who are left without lessons.
The problem lies in the fact that teachers have to be transferred from school to school to reach the work rate, and they have to work in schools that have very small numbers of students in classes.
SBASHK against the term "excess"
The head of the United Education Union in Kosovo, Rrahman Jashari, says he is against the term "redundancy" for teachers.
"Even with those few students, the teacher goes to the class and keeps the clock as if there were dozens of students in that class", says Jashari for Radio Free Europe.
According to the legislation in force, a class is supposed to have a minimum of 17 students and a maximum of 32.
This means that classes with few students or even schools have to be closed, or merged to reach the required number of students.
Based on the Law on Pre-University Education, the Ministry of Education can issue a by-law for setting the criteria for the establishment of pre-university education institutions and for terminating their activity.
In 2019, due to the small number of students, the Municipality of Kamenica decided to close 19 schools, out of the 29 it had. This decision was accompanied by many protests and dissatisfaction in that municipality, especially from the community of teachers.
Jashari says that the Government of Kosovo should make a long-term plan, taking into account the situation with the reduction of the number of students, and not make quick decisions to close schools or classes.
"Teachers should not be left on the streets," he says.
"Delayed institutions in reaction"
The GAP research institute based in Pristina has conducted a research in 2021, regarding the problem of the lack of students and the surplus of teachers in the municipalities of Kosovo.
In this research, complete data were obtained only from 19 municipalities of Kosovo.
Based on them, it turned out that there are 340 classes in Kosovo that have five or less students and 642 classes that have less than ten students.
Bekim Salihu, from the GAP Institute, says that the employment of teachers in the municipalities was done without any analysis of their needs.
"The institutions, instead of doing some kind of restructuring and reforming of the education system, have followed the opposite logic, that is, they have not adapted the aspect of employment to the number of students in the respective localities and municipalities", says Salihu.
According to him, schools with few students and many teachers negatively affect the budget of Kosovo, but also the school experience of the students.
The average salary received by teachers in pre-university education in Kosovo is 470 euros per month.
The EdGuard Institute, which deals with education issues in Kosovo, has also made an analysis regarding the structuring of the education system.
According to her, about 17 percent of educational institutions in Kosovo have less than 50 students.
The director of this institute, Rinor Qehaja, says for Radio Free Europe that "the demographic projections of the population are not unknown to the institutions".
"The non-reaction of the institutions is the only surprise," he says.
According to Qehaja, the restructuring of schools should be done at the country level and initiated as a reform by the Ministry of Education.
"Every initiative for the restructuring of educational institutions should be based on demographic projections, the teacher's hours fund and the students' well-being", he assesses.
According to the data of the Statistics Agency of Kosovo, the birth rate in the country has been in continuous decline since 2014. In that year, the number of live births was 25,929. In 2019, 21,798 births were registered, while last year 18,188. /REL
