An agreement was signed today between the Ministry of Education and the Albanian American Development Foundation for the modernisation of assessment systems within the new National Agency for Educational Services. The agreement aims at the full alignment of assessment processes with international standards, through the expertise of the University of Cambridge and in line with the pace required by the digital era in education.
This development marks an important moment in the ongoing process of improving and modernising educational services in Albania, with the objective of strengthening quality, increasing the transparency and reliability of assessment and certification systems, in accordance with the highest international standards. This cooperation will enable the Centre for Educational Services to serve students, teachers, academics, professionals and institutions across the country in a more efficient manner.
Prime Minister Rama was also present at the event and described the agreement as an essential step towards deepening the digital transformation of education and guaranteeing meritocracy within the system.
***
Prime Minister Edi Rama:
Looking at the presentation of our guest, who has finally arrived from Cambridge after seven years of effort, and as Michael also mentioned, after five ministers having been changed, I could not help but go back to the moment when we took the first step towards digitalising the higher education system, with university entrance exams, by introducing a ranking system based on results and making it, in practice, impossible for the path of chaos to continue, where whoever had support, connections, or the ability to pay would bypass others and take the place of someone who had no support, no connections, and no financial means.
At that time, there was a very strong reaction against such a process, but fortunately the process itself overturned all the claims and accusations that were raised, because for the first time there were no complaints. For the first time, the countless complaints that used to accompany university admission processes vanished, as a simple result of the fact that the entire process was based on facts and entirely handled by technology, not by people.
Today, we finally take this other very important step, to once again give technology a significant space in the delivery of services in support of pre-university and higher education.
If we consider that in the field of higher education, people deal with enrolments, diploma registrations, recognition of secondary education, and legalisations, for which a total of 52,000 services are provided annually; if we consider that within the framework of state exams and licensing there are 18,000 services per year; if we consider that for state matura exams, olympiads, basic education exams, and the PISA test, 88,000 services are provided annually, and in total all these together amount to around 150,000 to 160,000 services, then it is easy to understand how extraordinary the step we are taking today is, not simply by making technology available to the Centre for Educational Services, but by making available to all those who receive and will receive educational services a standard of excellence such as that of the University of Cambridge.
This is something that makes us proud that we have reached this day, but it is also something for which I feel the need to apologise to the Fund, to apologise Mr Martin in fact, since he is not here with us, because it has been an extraordinary ordeal to deal with prejudices, to deal with the mentality of the administration, and even to deal with leaders of the Centre for Educational Services who considered it a patriotic mission not to allow Americans into the internal affairs of Albanian education. The Centre for Educational Services became like “Submarine 105”, while this whole process turned into the film Face to Face, and although I took the side of the enemy, it took us a long time to finally make possible the American “takeover” of the heroic base of educational services of the Republic of Albania.
There were “casualties”, because it was impossible to do otherwise, and naturally it also required, as was rightly presented here, a political personality like Mirela Kumbaro to bring this work to completion.
Today, I am very grateful to the Fund, very grateful to Martin, very grateful also to the “coloniser” who has come from the United Kingdom to present the entire scheme of “absorption” and “assimilation” of the Albanian Centre for Services, and I express my satisfaction for this other fortress that has fallen and been handed over to excellence, just like all the fortresses we have taken, some from outside and some from within, to hand them over to excellence, which the Fund has always brought and has continuously sought to bring to the Republic of Albania.
I cannot help but also recall here the battle for the fortress of Butrint. Partly me with the government undermining the fortress from within, partly the Fund’s warships and bomber aircraft, and Butrint too was taken by the Americans and today is in an extraordinary process of transformation, in service of the excellence it deserves in management and within the global network of cultural heritage monuments.
I do not want to go on any longer, but I want to say that with great pleasure today we will continue the day with several other “mischievous” plans, of Americans taking over values, assets, and heroic centers of Albania, and the most important thing is that from all these “hostile operations”, it is the children, the youth, the pupils, the students, and the parents who will benefit, because this process too will now be a fair, transparent, equal process, immune to interference by anyone. And as was said here, I believe that for all those who think rationally, a method and a standard that has brought qualitative change to higher education in Singapore is entering Albania today and creating the premises for a much better perspective than what existed before today began, for higher education and education as a whole in Albania.
So, respect and many thanks to all those who made this result possible. Paradoxically, this has been the most difficult result to achieve in all our efforts with the Albanian American Development Fund, but in the end, as always, we succeeded.
And there is one more thing I cannot help but mention: at the end of every battle, the only one who loses hair volume and pigment is me, while Martin and Michael look just as I first met them. As for Aleksandrin, I do not include him in the equation, since he was born with white hair.
Thank you very much.
