Newsletter- Nr 3, 22 September 2015

• At the beginning of the school year 14 September 2015 – June 2016, Observatory for Children’s rights represented by 12 offices in all regions of Albania, assessing the performance and commitment of the education institution for the beginning of the school year, identifies some issues that require more attention and resolution from local and national institutions, in order to fulfill every child’s rights to be well educated:

– To have personal certificate as a necessary device for their registration in the school grades for all children whose families do not pay land tax, this problem is mostly found in Fier region, the local administrative unit Mbrostar Ura (15 children have been identified with this problem before starting school).

– To facilitate the process of registration of unregistered children in the civil status office, through a confirmation that the child is in the process of registration from various legal services at citizen’s disposal.

– To organize more community meetings with families so that they will be aware of vaccinating their children regularly, as an essential issue for their integration in all school’s grades.

– To facilitate the monetary amount that the families have to pay to register their children in preschool, for poor families or in extreme conditions, as well as other vulnerable groups (disability, minorities, etc.) where their financial resources are extremely limited.

– To recycle texts for children who come from poor families and those with financial difficulties.
– To create facilities for remote schools, in infrastructure and transport in order to increase children’s school attendance, and to apply the decision on the use of public funds for transportation of the educational employees and students far from their home.
– To reduce student’s number per class basing on the density that it takes per one student in class, in order to effectuate the standard and the attendance’s growing rate , and decrease the abandonment rate:
– 1.2 m2 for children in elementary school,
– 1.4 m2 for children in middle school;
– 1.5 m2 for children in high school.

– To influence for improving the girls education, in the families and areas where the dropout phenomenon is widely spread.
– The equal and professional treatment of every child should be taken into consideration, regardless of ethnicity – through awareness and periodic communications with the families and staff of the local education, health, social and policy-making institutions.
– To facilitate the process of adaptation of children that are returned in Albania, with courses and programs that they have learned before, mainly in the southern region of Albania.