Since the opening of the first Albanian School 137 years ago, education in Albania has evolved, experiencing fluctuations due to political and demographic developments.

From 1990 to 2022, the number of students in the 9-year education system has decreased by 50% due to high youth emigration and declining birth rates, according to official data from the Ministry of Education. During the same period, the number of teachers has decreased by 15%. This means that the student-to-teacher ratio has improved.

From 20.6 students per teacher in 1990, by 2022, there were 11.4 students per teacher in the 9-year cycle, nearly half of what it was 32 years ago. This trend in the education sector should translate into quality and a more motivating environment for teachers, but this is not the case.

Currently, teachers have an average salary lower than the public sector average, and on the other hand, the academic achievements of Albanian students in the international PISA test marked the lowest level in two decades in 2022.

Teachers in the 9-year cycle from various cities in the country told “Monitor” that they do not feel financially motivated as the difficulty of work has increased due to frequent changes in curricula, declining respect for the teacher’s figure, and dealing with contemporary school phenomena such as drug use, bullying, etc.

In 2023, the gap between the average salary in the public sector and the average salary in education widened further. The average gross salary of a teacher in the 9-year cycle was about 71,000 lek in 2023, or about 14% lower than the average salary in the public sector of 82,000 lek. In 2022, this difference was 11%.

The government implemented a pay reform, which in its first year did not consider teachers. Salaries for central administration almost doubled, but for education, they only increased by 7%. This difference has increased demotivation for teachers who are increasingly scarce in peripheral areas of the country.

In the Teacher Portal, there are hundreds of vacancies that cannot be filled with core profiles, mainly in northern schools.

“I’ve been in math education for almost 40 years. Currently, my salary with all categories and qualifications is only 10,000 lek higher than the school sanitary staff, with no difference from other teachers with lower difficulties such as visual arts and sports, while the teaching workload is high,” a math teacher told “Monitor”.

Mathematics is difficult and as such should also be reflected in salary. There was a payment of 1200 lek per month that the math teacher received more than others, but even that has been removed now. The net salary that pre-university education teachers receive is 50-60,000 lek per month.

This salary is now being competed with by elementary professions after the minimum wage increase. The salary reform applied by the government has not affected teachers. The increase in pay for central administration from 30 to 96% while teachers’ pay increased only 7% this year, which is enough to cover only the inflation increase.

Education experts argue that the low level of wages in education leads to poor recruitment of teachers in the future. With current wages, no good high school student would prefer to study teaching branches.