Education is an essential public service, as it equips students with the knowledge and skills to thrive in the society in which they live. Providing education of a comparable quality to all students, regardless of their socioeconomic background is key to reducing inequalities and poverty, and is conducive to inclusive growth. Students’ performance can be used as a proxy measure to assess the quality of education in a country.
The Western Balkans lag behind OECD and OECD-EU countries based on standardised test scores, such as PISA. Students in the Western Balkan region tend to have lower scores in reading (402), mathematics (414) and science (408). The largest gap is in reading (89 points difference to the OECD-EU average), followed by mean scores in science (84 points gap). However, the data shows that the quality of education improved substantially between 2015 and 2018 in the region. Moreover, the improvements in each of the three domains have been generally greater than in the OECD average. For instance, Western Balkan average in mathematics increased by 23 points from 2015 while the mean score in mathematics changed by 2 points on average in the OECD countries.
In the latest PISA edition (2018), Serbian students outperformed their counterparts in the Western Balkan region in all three domains, even if results were worse than in 2015. The mean scores in 2018 for Serbian students were 439 in reading (446 in 2015), 448 in mathematics (449) and 440 in science (445). Kosovo students had the lowest mean score in reading (353), mathematics (366) and science (365). Despite comparable levels of financial investments, evaluations show that the management of Kosovo’s education sector has been inefficient and disorganised, with a lack of adequate policies and standards for teacher development and accreditation. Merit-based recruitment of teachers has suffered from an absence of central regulations. Municipalities have had much discretionary power without sufficient oversight or central quality assurance.
Beyond mean scores, the share of PISA top and low performers in a country is indicative of the level of equality and equity in education. A result below 2 on the PISA scale is regarded as poor performance. On average, 54% of the students in the Western Balkans have a level of proficiency in mathematics that is below 2. In Kosovo, 77% of the students scored below level 2, followed by North Macedonia (61%) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (58%). In Albania, Montenegro and Serbia the share of students who have low performance in mathematics is below 50%.
Similarly, 54% of students in the Western Balkan region were below level 2 in terms of reading proficiency. The scores in reading are unevenly distributed. Montenegro and Serbia are the only countries in the Western Balkan region where just over half of the students have at level two or above. More importantly, Serbia has the highest share of students who have level four proficiency or above in reading (3%). At the other end of the scale is Kosovo where 79% of students have a reading proficiency that is less than level 2.
