Secondary Education for Roma and Egyptian Community Students in Albania

Albania has built a comprehensive legal and strategic architecture for the educational inclusion of its Roma and Egyptian national minorities, closely aligned with Council of Europe, EU, UNESCO and ILO standards. In practice, however, the right to secondary and vocational education for these communities remains, in the author’s words, an unfulfilled promise. This study triangulates the legal framework with fresh administrative data and two original surveys to show where the system breaks down.

National and international studies converge on an uncomfortable trend: the number of Roma and Egyptian students progressing through Albania’s pre-university and university system is declining year on year, and falls most steeply at the move from primary to secondary and higher education. Gender inequality compounds the pattern, with girls and women under-represented in the upper cycles.

Albania simultaneously faces two skills challenges. The working-age population is low-skilled — by the 2021 Labour Force Survey, 41.6% of the labour force and 48.3% of the working-age population hold only basic (8/9-year) education or less. Among registered unemployed jobseekers, 45.3% of Roma and 13.9% of Egyptians have not completed even primary education. The second challenge is the mismatch between workforce skills and labour-market demand. Vocational education and training (VET) sits at the intersection of both problems.

This study asks a deceptively simple question: when the law guarantees inclusive, free, quality education for all, why do Roma and Egyptian students keep disappearing at the secondary level — and what would actually change that? It pairs a legal-standards review with administrative data and the voices of students, parents, teachers and officials, to move from declaration to measurable reality.

VET is the process of acquiring the professional and technical skills needed for employment — through formal institutional training and non-formal courses, work practice and specialised experience — while also developing transversal competences such as communication, time management and problem-solving. For the Roma community it is strategically important: it enables labour-market integration, adapts traditional crafts to the modern economy, counters discrimination, strengthens family economies and raises rights-awareness.

2.1 Council of Europe framework

The European Convention on Human Rights (Art. 14; Protocol 12 — general prohibition of discrimination; Protocol 1 Art. 2 — the right to education), the (revised) European Social Charter (Arts. 17 and 30), the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages together oblige states to guarantee equal access to, and development of, vocational education as a vehicle for social and economic integration.

Committee of Ministers Recommendations Rec(2000)4 and CM/Rec(2009)4 shaped Albanian policy by promoting integration into mainstream schooling and prohibiting the misclassification of Roma children as having “special needs.” The 2005 Inclusion Framework, the 2010 Strasbourg Declaration, the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) and CM/Rec(2023)4 — which adds the active participation of young Roma in decision-making — complete a clear normative line. Implementation in Albania, however, is constrained by geographic segregation, scarce resources and social exclusion, and the youth-participation dimension is not yet reflected in national policy.

2.2 EU and global instruments

The ICESCR (Arts. 6, 7, 13), read with General Comments No. 13 and No. 18, frames vocational education through the “4-A” scheme — availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability — and creates a legal, not merely political, duty to remove material barriers and build real transitions from training to work. The UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960) and SDG4 / Education 2030 bind states to inclusive, quality, labour-market-relevant education and prohibit both de jure and de facto segregation. ILO Convention No. 142 (1975) ties guidance and training to labour-market demand. The EU’s European Agenda for Adult Learning 2021–2030 operationalises these standards, targeting 60% adult participation in lifelong learning each year.

The Constitution guarantees the right to education (Art. 57) and equality before the law with a prohibition of unjustified discrimination (Art. 18). These are reinforced by a dense statutory and strategic architecture, summarised below.

The NAP 2021–2025 (CoM 701/2021) is the keystone: it translates constitutional and international duties into measurable, binding targets. Its 2017 baseline is stark — only 22% of marginalised Roma aged 18–24 were in employment, education or training, versus 58% of non-Roma neighbours. Its end-2025 targets are ambitious: an 80% increase in completion of pre-school, basic and upper-secondary education; Roma history and culture embedded across all levels; 60% of unemployed registered Roma and Egyptians placed into work; and 70% of benefit recipients reintegrated into employment.

The recurring weakness is not normative formulation but financial capacity, administrative coordination and accountability. Like earlier programmes, the NAP risks fragmentation, unharmonised data and the absence of binding responsibility mechanisms. Without secondary legislation, technical guidance and dedicated financing, its education and VET measures remain general provisions rather than measurable results.

The study uses a convergent mixed-methods design, combining qualitative legal analysis with quantitative survey data to characterise the current situation and ground realistic recommendations in the Albanian context.

AKPA — the National Agency for Employment and Skills — operates regional and local employment offices, public VET directorates and public vocational schools. Roma and Egyptian jobseekers are treated as a disadvantaged “special group”; in the Employment Programme, Roma and Egyptian beneficiaries receive six salaries versus four for other beneficiaries. The data AKPA supplied — alongside the ministries’ non-response — define the empirical core of this study.

Profiles completed. Among graduating cohorts, hospitality and tourism is the dominant profile (2024–25: 30 Egyptian and 6 Roma graduates). High-value, future-facing profiles — web development, ICT, ICT user support, multimedia, programming, veterinary science — are followed by very few students from either community, or not at all. The absence of career counselling shows directly in this skew away from labour-market-aligned fields.

The student questionnaire reached 98 respondents in May 2025: 69.4% girls, 29.6% boys; 51% Roma, 40.8% Egyptian, <10% majority. About 90% were of an age to be in pre-university or higher education. Roughly 73.5% attend general secondary school, 14.3% vocational, 7.1% the compulsory 9-year cycle, and about 5% attend no school at all — a small but acutely at-risk group.

Attendance is high among those enrolled (79.6% attend daily), yet stability of enrolment does not guarantee quality inclusion: many attend irregularly or experience discrimination despite being formally registered. Of the 18 students who explained why they had left school, economic reasons dominated, followed by family opposition, emigration and health problems.

Aspiration nonetheless runs high: 52% of students intend to continue to higher education, 16.3% plan to start work, and 12.3% aim for VET or specialised training. Without career guidance, however, these intentions meet a precarious reality — choices shaped by the need to support the family rather than by ability or interest. Only 22.4% take part in any extracurricular activity; many girls report not feeling invited, or being held back by family expectations and gendered prejudice.

Asked in an open question what would make school better, students named: respect and non-discrimination from teachers and peers; teachers or mentors from their own communities; diversity training for staff; activities that honour Roma and Egyptian culture; structured academic support and school psychologists; and basic enabling conditions — free transport, a school meal, economic aid. As one respondent put it, real inclusion happens when students feel heard, represented and valued.

The second instrument reached 108 adults — 66.7% parents, 11.1% teachers or psychologists, 8.3% central or local administration staff, and 13.9% others; 71.3% women, mostly aged 30–50, and predominantly from the Egyptian community. It was designed to view the same questions through adult and institutional eyes.

Adults echo students almost exactly. Economic hardship is named as the primary driver of irregular attendance; negative attitudes, prejudice and stereotyping follow. Financial support for families and students is seen as the single most decisive lever, with learning support, teacher support and career counselling close behind — all national priorities that, respondents say, are not delivered, not communicated, or confined to a few cities.

On the most effective form of education, 55.6% favour university study (linked to better employment and public- administration posts), while 34.3% point to vocational training and trades as a faster route into the labour market. The pattern mirrors students’ own aspirations and confirms that the orientation toward vocational pathways is undermined by the absence of effective counselling and adequate information. In their open responses, adults call for stronger school–family–community cooperation, motivating scholarships, community mentors, extracurricular activities and the inclusion of Roma language and culture in compulsory education. One summed up the message: “Work hard today to win tomorrow.”

Three convergent signals emerge across the legal, administrative and survey strands. First, a declaration–implementation gap. Albania’s framework is substantively harmonised with international standards, yet enforcement is fragmented and frequently formal. Binding NAP targets sit unmonitored; rights affirmed on paper do not translate into the classroom.

Second, an information vacuum. The absence of gender-disaggregated data, the lack of any monitoring reports, and the failure of the Ministry of Education to answer a lawful information request mean the state cannot measure its own performance. A 64% collapse in Roma vocational enrolment can occur without triggering analysis or response — the clearest evidence that monitoring, not ambition, is the binding constraint.

Third, a mismatch between provision and need. Support is concentrated in economic transfers, while the developmental measures students and parents demand — career counselling, mentored practice, learning support and cultural mediators — are largely absent. Career guidance, mandated by law and resourced on paper, is experienced as non-existent by a majority of students, helping explain both dropout and the skew toward low-status profiles. Gendered exclusion runs through every strand, with girls especially constrained by family expectations and prejudice even as they form the majority of motivated respondents.

Under Law No. 119/2014 on the right to information, three formal requests were submitted, each seeking disaggregated enrolment, completion, support, counselling and monitoring data for Roma and Egyptian students.

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