By Sonila Isaku
The first bell announced the start of the new school year. Carefully clad and with gifts for those who will lead them in the path of knowledge, around 495 thousand pupils started the teaching process, while 33 thousand of them have enrolled the first grade. Many of them look happy, while for others, it was very hard to separate from their parents, even if it meant for a few hours.
The start of the school year seems to have ruined the laziness of summer in all cities and more so in the capital. Everyone prepared for this day, by buying all the learning materials, books, bags, different accessories and clothes. Commercial centers in the capital were busy, especially those shops that sell children clothes and accessories for the learning process. But it seems that this great desire for new purchases had also taken hold of parents, who didn’t hesitate on introducing new clothes to their wardrobe on the pretext of looking more decent when sending their child for the first time at school.
The cost of the first day
But what was the cost for a child? How much money have children spent on the start of the first day of school? By making a simple calculation, expenses for this day seem to account for an average monthly salary. Thus, for children attending 9th grade schools, expenses for text books and school materials ranged from 2500 lek to 8 thousand lek. The biggest cost relates to foreign language texts. Also, book shops have offered to children extra texts to assist them in their work, increasing expenses for school books. Another expense is the purchase of the bag and its price ranged from 2 thousand lek to 10 thousand lek. Other expenses relate to accessories and portfolio, which is necessary for each child. All of these amount to 1000 to 15000 lek. Let us not forget book covers which have a cost of up to 1 thousand lek.
Expenses on clothes
It has now become a tradition to have new clothes on the first day of school. For teenagers now, to have new sport shoes, new trousers of the latest trends or a new t-shirt, is a must. And this situation is not only present among teenagers, but juniors too and in this case, this rivalry exists among parents who will take pictures and post them in social networks to show off their expensive clothes.
And for all of these, a parent who has a child attending a 9th grade school needs to spend at least 15-20 thousand lek for their children’s clothes. These are the costs for one child, while these costs double when it comes to two children and when one of them is a teenager, then the costs are higher.
But how are Albanian households affording these expenses, which seem to have become obligatory, because a child may be mocked by his friends for his old sport shoes, which he has worn last year too. He may be subject of bullying due to his appearance and clothes, which are not new. Dhurata Ç told Albanian Free Press that it was very hard for her to fulfill the wishes that her teenage daughter had, because she’s the only one that brings bread to the table. “I had to save or even borrow to buy the books and clothes of my daughter. She’s a teenager and I don’t want her to be different from her friends. Nonetheless, I go through many difficulties to secure that money. Now I need to find some other job to afford my living costs and pay the debts that accumulate everyday”, Dhurata says. Meanwhile, for Vjola, it wasn’t that difficult to buy her two children’s clothes, because she spent her holidays in Italy where she also bought the clothes for the first day of her children at school and in the kindergarten. And given that her son would enter first grade, she even decided to spoil herself by buying a dress.
New school year, 33 thousand children enter classrooms for the first time
“500 thousand children started school today, while 33 thousand of them entered first grade. Meanwhile, around 40 thousand teachers also started work today”, says Zamira GJini, directress of the pre-university education department at the Ministry of Education and Science.
Meanwhile, the private system has around 47 thousand registered pupils. The number of disabled children is around 3 thousand with 315 teachers in charge of teaching them.
Safety in the schools of Tirana, 400 officers ready to guarantee order
Over 400 officers have been engaged in Tirana to guarantee order throughout the school year which has just started. The head of public security at the police of Tirana, Dhimitraq Ziu says that in contrast to other years, this time, all the structures have been engaged, starting with road police, municipality police and even criminal police. Based on the events taken place a year ago, where there were problems with drugs entering schools, Ziu said that this year, police will organize sudden raids. According to the police official, a data base is in place now for problematic people and those with criminal records, who distribute drugs near schools. For this, police is in constant touch with headmasters, which act as the main source of information for problematic or suspected cases.
