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Reflection on the results of PISA 2025 and beyond...

2025-11-16 13:16:00, Opinione Ardi Stefa

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) has published the final results of the 2025 tests, where Albania is ranked 69th out of 80 participating countries.

The PISA 2025 results are not just bad news. They are a collective slap in the face. PISA 2025 told us bluntly what we pretend not to know: our education system is collapsing. A harsh diagnosis of an education system that for years has been kept alive only with false optimism, empty declarations and a silent heroism of some teachers who still believe that knowledge has value. Not overthrown by chance, but overthrown by our own hands. With indifference, with hypocrisy, with our daily lies.

Who is to blame?

School? School has remained a hostage to reforms made on paper, to weak, often poorly translated texts, to methodologies that do not work and to those who see it as unprofessional... A multitude of unclear instructions, models of diaries, plans, tables, SMIP... If the results of the documents were measured, Albania would be the champion of Europe. But when it comes to measuring knowledge..., in the end, not at all.

Parents who only want grades, not knowledge. Who see school as a place where “the child doesn’t have to think too much,” but to get through class as little as possible; or as a “parking lot” for the child for a few hours, so that they can be free. Parents demand high grades for children who can barely read two paragraphs and protest every grade, or a teacher’s slip, but not the fact that their child hasn’t opened a book for months. And they forget that education is not a bespoke service, but a joint effort.

Society? Media? They promote the most wrong models: the rich without work and education, the famous without values, the strong without culture. The Albanian student today grows up with the message that he doesn't need school, that a viral video is enough to feel successful. Then we expect our children to respect knowledge? But how, when the country has put ignorance on a pedestal?

Universities? Which from 2006 onwards opened teaching branches for graduates with an average of 6.5, an average below the minimum of educational dignity today and professional tomorrow. This is where the foundations began to crumble. And those who took teaching branches, because they could not earn any other branch, will later "teach and educate" future generations. In a word: we are reaping what we have sown.

Students? Students no longer have motivation, because the system doesn't give them a reason to have it. The system has taught them a bitter truth: grades are bought with pressure, not earned with effort. Respect for the teacher is "optional" and "outdated." Discipline is called "violation of rights" and "dictatorship." And no one tells them bluntly that this way you don't get anywhere.

Teachers? Teachers have turned into documentation robots and are immersed in a sea of ??unclear instructions, plans and diaries, corrections, filling out the SMIP, daily communication with parents that have only one function: to occupy all their time, to absorb all their energy to the point that they cannot even deal with their children and families. Without the right to speak. Because every word said to a student is considered bullying. Without the right to authority. Without the right to set the grade that the student deserves, to remove a student from the classroom, to ask for support. Because a teacher today only has duties, no rights. Teachers today cannot say: "This student is not working". Because there is always a principal, a parent, an institution, a physical threat or even a job threat hanging over them. And the teacher is the one who bears responsibility for every social failure, from functional illiteracy to the lack of civic culture. Why? Because it is the weakest link in the chain of the rotten and collapsing education system.

At noon, the teacher goes home with notebooks to correct, to write a diary and with a sense of mission that no one appreciates anymore. Politicians talk about “quality” education, but their children study abroad. Ministers campaign for “vocational education”, but never send their children to vocational schools.

And then we wonder why we are at the bottom of PISA.

Because we are getting exactly what we gave: nothing.

Our young people are not incompetent. They are victims of a broken system. We have confused them, bombarded them with useless demands, surrounded them with false role models, and then we judge them because they don't "do well on tests."

The last and most painful question: Is it worth being a teacher in Albania today?

If you are ready to work in silence, often without respect, without gratitude, without support, and with a system that tires you out more than the profession itself, then...

Albania cannot survive without teachers, even though teaching is currently a heroism and not a profession. Without those who still believe that knowledge has value and who, anyway, try. Without those who, despite everything, do not give up, against the system, against indifference, against lack of respect, against chaos. And they do it only because they still believe that a child can be saved even if the system is lost.

But... in Albania it's no longer worth being a teacher.../ CNA