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Kosovo—Support to Improve Quality of Pre-University Education
Client: European Union
Duration: 2021-2025
Region: Eastern Europe and Central Asia
Country: Kosovo
Solutions: Governance Education
Kosovo’s education system has undergone substantial reforms in the past few decades and improving the quality of education is central to the country’s efforts to foster European integration. While the frameworks have been established, implementation needs to be reinforced.
Our team is therefore working to foster a quality-based, accountable education and training system in Kosovo, in line with the best international practices in pre-university education.
In Kosovo, the relatively recent decentralization of the education system requires consolidation. The project seeks to strengthen municipal education directorates (MEDs) and schools to fulfill their assigned functions related to school recruitment, teacher professional development, and quality assurance. One of our project’s main tasks is to strengthen the implementation of a merit-based, non-discriminatory, gender-equal, and transparent recruitment system of teachers and principals and to enhance their continued professional development.
A further key area of focus will be on further operationalizing the core role of quality coordinators at the central, MED, and school levels. Activities will support the Ministry of Education and Science (MESTI) and other relevant stakeholders in the preparation of the framework for quality assurance and monitoring of teacher professional development.
High-quality textbooks underpin teaching and learning, and one of the first activities of the project was to support MESTI in developing the new law on textbooks which will further strengthen all phases of the textbook development and selection process. The project will also carry out targeted capacity building of the Textbooks Council and develop the capacities of schools and other relevant institutions to engage in processes related to drafting, implementation, and revision of textbooks.
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Sample Activities
- Establish a mechanism for quality, non-discriminatory, gender-equal, and criterion-based recruitment of school directors and teachers.
- Develop a strategic plan for a periodic and ad-hoc evaluation of schools’ performance and initiation of monitoring processes for a new outcome-based curriculum at the central and local levels.
- Enhance a more integrated and well-defined legal and regulatory framework—in line with international and European standards and practices—to underpin the drafting and digitization of school textbooks.
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Digital Development in the Western Balkans: Kosovo
Feb 13, 2020
By Talia Dweck
Tags: Digital Insights • Ecosystem Insights
Last month, the talented, globe-trotting Chloe Carrington posted the first blog on DAI’s activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina in our six-part series about digital development in the Western Balkans. If you haven’t read it, you should. If you did, you’ll know that the United Kingdom’s Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) funded DAI to map digital ecosystems across the Western Balkans, with a focus on identifying areas where the FCO can support the technology sector in closing the digital skill supply-demand gap.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, check. Next up—Kosovo!
Let me start by giving you some background. Since the end of the Kosovo War in 1999 and its independence from Serbia almost a decade later, Kosovo has been rebuilding socially, politically, and economically. Its efforts have been hugely successful: Over the past decade, the country has become the fastest-growing economy in the Western Balkans. And the digital economy—the economic activity that results from myriad online business transactions and connections through internet-based markets—is a major contributor to this upward trend.
The technology sector in Kosovo is thriving despite many roadblocks. The low cost of building digital products and services has enabled Kosovars to rapidly grow the sector, spurring job generation, improving the export market, and increasing incomes. Rapid growth has also been enabled by the following:
- 70 percent of the population is under 35 years of age and interested in new and innovative employment opportunities, such as the digital sector.
- There is more than 85 percent internet penetration and 90 percent 3G and 4G coverage across the country.
- Kosovo is ranked 44 out of 190 economies on the Ease of Doing Business Index due to its business-friendly regulatory environment, especially the technology sector. • The Kosovo government has stated that digital is one of six priority sectors for economic development.
- In spite of these great strides, our research uncovered a number of key barriers to digital development in Kosovo.
Outsourcing booms, but demand for local digital products and services lags behind. With a population of 1.83 million, economic growth in Kosovo is dependent on the export of products and services to the wider European market. Unsurprisingly, there is a widespread belief that international demand will be the key driver to developing a dynamic and diversified private sector—to the detriment of the local market and national consumption. In 2018, for example, more than 74 percent of technology companies exported their services and products. Demand does not seem to be slowing down. From the perspective of the European market, Kosovar tech companies can provide quality products and services at a significantly lower cost than other markets.
The domestic market has been left behind and overshadowed by the focus on exports. Many local SMEs have yet to recognize the benefit of integrating digital products and services, and Kosovar technology companies perpetuate this lack of knowledge by failing to target local businesses because they do not see them as a profitable market. This disconnect will promote a slow growing local market that does not capitalize on the benefits of digital.
Technology education cannot keep pace with the rapidly changing sector. Although Kosovo’s large youth population benefits from the country’s economic growth, its potential has yet to be fully tapped. In the technology sector in particular, there is a clear mismatch between the skills that the market demands and the skills that students obtain in their tertiary education. Students graduating with degrees in computer science or related fields require at least six months to a year of additional training before they have the skills needed to enter the digital workforce. The root of this problem is that the accreditation process for courses in tertiary institutions is significantly slower than the rapidly evolving technology market. Software programming languages become outdated quickly, and new programming skills are in constant demand. On top of this, government legislation limits a university’s ability to adapt course offerings to the demands of the market, requiring an accreditation application and approval process that can take anywhere from two to five years. At that point, the courses are often no longer relevant.
Slow progress on e-governance. The Government of Kosovo, with support from donors, has made progress toward digitizing their services and operations to combat corruption and increase accountability and transparency. Unfortunately, these efforts are uncoordinated and siloed. For example, the government does not have an e-governance strategy, nor a body that coordinates efforts to digitalize government services. Various projects are working to make government data open and readily available to citizens, but so far, few ministries have released their data. And the data platforms that are public are not interoperable, further promoting data silos. All public tender documents are issued electronically as of January 2019, and all private sector bids be submitted electronically, yet Kosovo’s e-procurement system is not interoperable with other systems in development. Additionally, while the Kosovo IT Strategy does call to establish a joint working group on e-government and open data, this has yet to happen. There is no organization nor staffing structure to manage and align investments in e-governance.
Next Steps for Kosovo
We recommend three main courses of action to overcome these challenges.
1. Increase awareness of the benefits of technology among traditional local businesses. Build the demand for digital tools and services by highlighting their potential return on investment, and foster relationships between these businesses and technology companies. Promoting digital transformation among Kosovo businesses has the potential to contribute to the country’s economic growth in the long term.
2. Broader policy change is needed to overcome the technology digital skill supply-demand gap. Focus on change that will allow universities to modify 20 to 30 percent of their curricula each year without requiring accreditation agency approval. This will allow universities to offer new courses that are in line with the technology market demand while continuing to teach the approved core curriculum.
3. Develop a central IT agency with the sole mandate of coordinating and managing the development of state e-governance systems. In Kosovo, this body could create standards for all existing and future e-governance efforts, systematizing the government’s digital transformation through enhanced coordination.
This post is part of a series.
DAI works on the frontlines of international development. Transforming ideas into action—action into impact. We are committed to shaping a more livable world .
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Kosovo—Transparent, Effective, and Accountable Municipalities (TEAM); Municipal Integrity Activity · DAI, an international development company. DAI works on the frontlines of international development. Transforming ideas into action—action into impact. We are committed to shaping a more livable world.
Kosovo—Support to Improve Quality of Pre-University Education · DAI, an international development company. DAI works on the frontlines of international development. Transforming ideas into action—action into impact. We are committed to shaping a more livable world.
Kosovo is ranked 44 out of 190 economies on the Ease of Doing Business Index due to its business-friendly regulatory environment, especially the technology sector. • The Kosovo government has stated that digital is one of six priority sectors for economic development.
DAI, a global consulting firm based in the United States, is currently accepting applications from senior candidates for technical and managerial long-terms position for an anticipated new governance activity in Kosovo funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
DAI Global Email: [email protected]dai.com. Numri i ... KosovaJob is the largest employment network in Kosovo certified by Bureau Veritas with ISO 9001:2015 Quality ...
DAI Global - KosovaJob.com DAI Global Email: [email protected]dai.com Numri i Telefonit: +383 49 199 005 Adresa: Str.Mujo Ulqinaku No 20. Qyteti: Prishtine Konkurset Aktive Rreth Kompanisë
Association of Kosovo Municipalities Collaborating, Learning and Adopting Civil Society Organizations Data Quality Assessment Development Objective GOK Government of Kosovo IT Information Technology KIPA Kosovo Institute for Public Administration LG Local Governments MOF MEL Ministry of Finance Monitoring, Evaluating and Learning
USAID Kosovo’s Transparent, Effective and Accountable Municipalities activity is working with both local and central governments to improve their procurement procedures.
DAI is a global development company with corporate offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, EU, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Palestine and project operations worldwide. We tackle fundamental social and economic development problems caused by inefficient markets, ineffective governance, and instability. DAI works on the frontlines of global ...