MR. STANKOVIC: STATE PROVIDED FUNDS FOR THE TRANSLATION AND PRINTING OF TEXTBOOKS IN ALBANIAN

14. August 2017.

Presevo, Bujanovac, Medvedja - Although the Albanian National Council signed, last March, with the Ministry of Education an Agreement on the Procurement of Missing Textbooks for the students who attend classes in the Albanian language, the Council has not yet hired any translators of the textbooks from Albania that should be formally introduced in the school system. The state has provided funds both for the translation and printing.

By 2015, during the then Albanian National Council, 79 textbooks in the Albanian language were approved for primary schools, as well as three for pre-schools and four for secondary schools. Not a single textbook has been approved since then and there are still 43 missing ones. The Coordination Body of the Government of the Republic of Serbia for the Municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja is involved in the job, while the President of the Coordination Body, Prof. Zoran Stankovic, PhD, said that they were persistently trying to solve the problem, but that they could not do it until the Council had fulfilled its obligations.

“First, the Ministry of Education, the Institute for Textbooks and the national councils signed a Memorandum on the Procurement of Missing Textbooks, and then the then Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic and the Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama agreed that the problem should be solved as soon as possible. This January, we had a meeting with the Ambassador of Albania in our country, which was also attended by Jonuz Musliu, the President of the Albanian National Council, who pledged that he would provide the translators, but that has not been done yet. The beginning of the school year is approaching and there is no longer any chance for the completion of the job by September 1, "said Prof Zoran Stankovic, PhD.

Gordana Mijatovic, the Assistant Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Education, which prepares textbooks for approval, says that over the past year they did not receive any translations or authorial textbooks which should be approved.

“The Memorandum on the Procurement of Missing Textbooks has been signed with eight national minority councils, and we have good cooperation with seven of them. Their manuscripts are coming and the commissions are approving them. Only the Albanian National Council has not sent us anything,” Gordana Mijatovic says.

Translation of the textbooks into the Serbian language is necessary, so that the Institute and the Ministry of Education could approve their contents.

Jonuz Musliu says that the problem lies in the low cost of translation of 700 dinars per page, which is how much the state pays for it.

“A small number of textbooks have been provided, while only the textbook for the Albanian language has been provided for all four grades of secondary school. The stalled textbooks mostly include those related to the Albanian language, history, geography and art, due to the conflicting views on the Albanian historiography and the portrayal of Kosovo and Metohija, while textbooks for science subjects, such as those for chemistry, mathematics and physics, are not allowed in Serbia, either”, Mr. Musliu said.

Over the previous years, smuggled textbooks from Kosovo and Metohija were repeatedly detected and confiscated in South Serbia. Their use in schools is illegal, because every book that is used in the educational system of the Republic of Serbia must have the approval of the Ministry of Education.

Source: Evening News and Coordination Body