Ministry's report on Matura 2024/ Sula: Manastirliu can no longer deceive with non-existent statistics

The Head of the Education Department at the Democratic Party, Lili Sula, has reacted to the announcement of the public report of the 2024 Matura by the Ministry of Education.

She emphasized that this report has not been made available to the public on the official websites of the ministry and the Center for Educational Services, highlighting the lack of transparency that makes the report unreliable.

Sula underlined that the Democratic Party is committed to increasing funding for education and improving the quality of education in Albania.

Full speech:

The Ministry of Education announced the publication of the public report on the 2024 Matura exam, but without making this report public, as required by law, on the official websites www.arsimi.gov.al, nor on www.qsha.gov.al. The lack of transparency for the public makes the data on the 2024 Matura exams unreliable.

For two consecutive years, the number of high school graduates has been considered statistically the same, which is impossible, since according to all reports, there has been a significant decrease in the number of students from year to year. The average grade for mathematics, according to the minister, has increased from 6.72 in 2023 to 7.79 in 2024, a galloping increase that only the Ministry of Education can interpret, since the average grade can change in the amount of decimal points (tenths, hundredths).

1. The Manastirliu Ministry deceived the 2024 high school graduates who started their first year of high school in 2021, the year in which they finished 9th grade. According to the PISA 2022 results, Mathematics has shown a drastic decline for the period 2018-2022, with 69 points - the strongest decline of all countries participating in the test. There is no way that these students, with the lowest achievements in 9th grade, will become the graduates with the highest results.

2. There is no publication by the Ministry of Education and Sports or the Center for Educational Services on the indicators of the test as a whole and for each question. It is necessary to publish the content of the test, the difficulty index, the validity of each question and the test, the discrimination index, etc. expressed in %

3. The report states that there has been a significant increase in the passing rate, while no information is provided on what the points limit was and how it was set. We emphasize that, from 2013-2020, by order of the Ministry, this limit was predetermined at 20% and this very way of determining the points limit has been criticized several times in international reports.

4. The graduates of the year 2024 are pursuing their first year of university studies for this academic year. In the study programs where the subject of Mathematics is taught, their results are quite low and this proves once again that the data in the report are not what Minister Manastirliu expresses, but are what international organizations have published.

– Minister Manastirliu can no longer deceive citizens with non-existent statistics produced only for the electoral campaign, because high school graduates and Albanians do not forget that all the 2024 Matura tests came out in the first minutes of the exam, subverting the testing and evaluation process, as well as rejecting the toil and sweat of 3 years of education of the best students.

The Democratic Party in its program pledges to financially support education, the priority system of the post-May 11 government, with 5% of GDP, and bring it out of deep collapse, improve the results of students' skills in the PISA test, provide digital infrastructure, restore the dignity of teachers, and transform schools from centers of insecurity and drugs into centers of European education and training.