In some schools in Kosovo, the lack of German language teachers and physics teachers is affecting students. Municipal Education Directorates are obliged to look for other alternatives, hiring students or in other cases English language teachers to teach German as well. The Ministry of Education says that maximum efforts should be made for the replacement to be as qualified as possible.
The Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Dukagjin Pupovci in a statement for KosovaPress, referring to the lack of certain profiles, said that we should work for the future by increasing the number of students admitted to the faculties which are most needed.
“There is no lack of teachers, in terms of numbers, there may be a lack of certain profiles such as the German language profile, where people now have other employment opportunities. I think that in those cases the best efforts should be made to find a qualified replacement, and of course we should be careful to increase the numbers with the relevant faculties, in order to have more offer in that field, in the future”, said Pupovci.
The Municipal Directorate of Education in Gjakova admits that there is a shortage of staff for mathematics, German language, and physics. Director Eranda Baçi told KosovaPress that the competition procedures also take longer and students are obliged to attend classes without an adequate teacher.
“We have shortages of teachers, mainly in mathematics, German and physics… For German language, 3 teaching hours are left unfilled. The competition was open and the decision is dated 09.07.2021, in which most of the candidates were not graduates, but were with different courses and students. We have the same problem with physics, there are no staff and two people with 180 credits have been accepted or are in the process… The problem with the competition deadline due to the law is that it lasts up to 2 and a half months and three, therefore I think this is creating a problem for us and the students are also suffering. It is a long time of competition procedures, which is creating problems for us”, said Baçi.
The same problem has the municipality of Peja, where the German language which is in the curriculum for the lower secondary students, according to the director of Education of this municipality, Naser Gega, is taught by English language teachers.
“In some schools this subject is taught by teachers who are English language graduates. They also have German as part of English, and are replacing it. There is a significant lack, but a very small lack is that of the German language in any school”, said Gega.
The lack of physics teachers was also expressed by the director of Education in the municipality of Gjilan, Selvete Sylejmani. They, according to her, are being replaced by students who study physics.
“Apart from the subject of physics, where we do not have graduate teachers, the students who study physics had to be engaged, whereas for all the others we have staff and the situation is stable”, said Sylejmani.
The Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation says that the schools where there is a shortage of teachers of different subjects should be identified and then send the education inspectors to these schools to verify the situation.
