The closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic has caused problems for students of the Turkish community in Kosovo. The interruption of the internet and the lack of technological equipment for online classes, were the problems they faced during the distance learning time.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the teaching process in the country was interrupted on March 11, 2020, and on March 30, 2020, the distance learning process started for the students of the Turkish community, where the teaching units were initially broadcast on Radio Television of Kosovo, and then online learning has started through various platforms. Tuana Muja is a seventh-grade student at the "Emin Duraku" school in Prizren. She says that internet interruption has been the main problem she has had during online learning. "I did not have any problems in accessing online learning, but sometimes because we are many students, the Internet did not work, sometimes the teacher's voice did not come well, sometimes some friends did not participate in online learning. How effective the online learning has been is a topic for discussion... We had problems understanding the professor due to technical problems of the internet and the voice did not come well, but the professor at the end of the lesson sent the homework to us and we did the homework and sent it to the teacher through the photos", she said. In addition to students, the online learning has been a challenge for the teachers themselves, especially for primary school teachers. Nese Tabaku-Gasi, a teacher at the elementary school "Emin Duraku", says that online learning with first and second grade students has been a challenge, as they have often been unable to learn due to the noise. "At the time of the pandemic, we first heard about online learning, this has been a new topic for both us and the students. We as a school for the first time have used the Microsoft Teams platform for online learning, and we have successfully held the lesson on this platform. We also had problems because we were immediately locked up at home, teachers and students did not have the opportunity to come to school and we were able to teach only through the telephone or computer", she said. She says that a number of students did not participate in the online learning, as they did not have technological equipment, while she says that the interruption of the internet has made online learning more difficult. "During the online learning we had problems with the internet, sometimes I or the students had technical problems with the internet. Sometimes some students did not participate. After their parents returned to work, some students did not have communication equipment for online learning, as they used their parents' phone, and when they went to work, they took the phone with them, so, in this case we had a problem", she said. During the online learning process, the elementary school children had the most problems, especially the first and second grade. Saranda Ozer talks about the difficulties her daughter had during the first grade, to learn the letters through the phone screen. She says that learning online has been difficult for her as a parent, as all the time she had to stay close to the girl and help her understand. "The online learning has been really hard for both my daughter and me, especially the letters, the numbers, it has been very difficult, because when she was at school, when she came home, she told us what they did... When she started learning the letters and numbers, as well as reading, it was a little harder for her, and then the online classes, so it was a little harder for her", she says. Kosovo institutions do not have data on the involvement of children of the Turkish community in the online learning process, such data is not provided by the Kosovo Agency of Statistics.   This article was realized within the project "Identification of challenges in the learning process of children of non-majority community as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic" implemented by the Center for Innovation and Development / CFID and funded by Slovak Agency for International Development Cooperation / SlovakAid.