Albania

This chapter elaborates policy recommendations for promoting the sustainability and circularity of North Macedonia’s construction sector across all building life stages. It gives an oversight of the current state-of-play and policy framework in the country along with areas for improvement and puts forward a set of concrete policy recommendations, enriched with insights from international best practices.

Since the 2000s, Albania has improved access to education and raised learning outcomes. However, educational attainment and performance continue to be strongly influenced by students’ background characteristics. Learning levels remain among the lowest in Europe. This reflects systemic challenges of low funding, unstable governance and limited capacity. Placing student learning at the centre of Albania’s evaluation and assessment processes can help to focus the system onto raising standards for all.

This chapter explores how Albania’s appraisal processes and related teaching standards, career structure and professional learning policies could better develop teachers’ competencies. While Albania has a range of appraisal processes, they are not designed to support teachers’ professional growth. In addition, teachers’ professional development remains underfunded, which contributes to a lack of effective job‑embedded learning opportunities. Albania needs to revise its appraisal processes and teacher career structure and further invest in professional learning to help its existing teacher workforce develop more complex knowledge and skills. Albania also needs to address factors that may dissuade the best candidates from entering the teaching profession, including onerous procedures for certification. Finally, Albania needs to ensure that initial teacher education programmes are equipping future entrants with the student‑centred approaches and other competencies they will need for the classroom.

This chapter looks at how Albania can make better use of school evaluation to improve teaching and learning practices. Albania has central procedures for conducting external school evaluations, but very few have been undertaken in recent years. A recent re-organisation of the country’s school evaluation system aims to increase capacity to conduct evaluations and also provide more support to schools. However, some changes may compromise the quality of evaluations. These include the spreading of responsibility for external school evaluations across multiple bodies. In addition, ongoing systemic challenges in Albania limit schools’ ability to meaningfully respond to external evaluations and their annual self‑evaluations. In particular, schools are underfunded and have minimal to no autonomy to make budgetary decisions. Schools are also hindered by a lack of strong school leadership. Albania is addressing this challenge through the establishment of a new School of Directors to train and certify principals. Albania also needs to consolidate responsibility for external school evaluation and provide greater technical and financial support to schools to act upon external and internal evaluation findings.

Albania has started to establish some of the components integral to system evaluation, including the development of a modern education management information system (EMIS). However, the lack of processes and capacity needed to conduct system evaluation, as well as low government demand for evidence, limits Albania’s ability to use evaluation information for system improvement. This chapter recommends that Albania integrate evaluation more centrally into the new national education strategy and strengthen the institutional capacity needed to support a culture of system evaluation. This chapter also reviews Albania’s national assessment system and EMIS development plans, offering recommendations to ensure these tools support strategic planning and national education goals.

This chapter assesses the circular economy policy framework and initiatives in North Macedonia, emphasising critical economic aspects and environmental impact related to energy production, emissions, material use and waste management. Challenges persist in areas such as energy intensity, fossil dependency, circular material use and waste recycling. This chapter pinpoints key policy areas essential for North Macedonia’s shift towards a circular and carbon-neutral economy. By identifying gaps in both policy formulation and implementation, and incorporating further analyses, the chapter provides insights for prioritising areas in future circular economy policy documents.

This chapter analyses Albania’s current circular economy policy landscape and initiatives, focusing on key economic features and environmental implications stemming from energy production, emissions, material use and waste management. By pinpointing gaps in both policy and practice and integrating additional analyses, the chapter provides valuable insights for prioritising areas in future circular economy policy documents to drive Albania’s transition to a circular and carbon-neutral economy.

Transitioning to a circular economy is a long-term process requiring broad societal consensus. This roadmap was developed through a multi-step process involving a wide range of stakeholders in a continuous dialogue spanning several months. This annex describes how the roadmap was designed.

Transitioning to a circular economy is a long-term process requiring broad societal consensus. The Roadmap Towards Circular Economy of North Macedonia was developed through a multi-step process which involved a wide range of stakeholders in a continuous dialogue. The design of the roadmap was undertaken as described below.

Private investment by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)1 is a key generator of economic growth and social change in OECD member country economies. In most countries, over 90% of all enterprises are SMEs. It is now widely accepted that the contribution of SMEs to new jobs, exports, innovation and regional development is vital to national development. How to benefit from and maximise this contribution is a continuous challenge for all countries. This Enterprise Policy Performance Assessment seeks to help address that question for Albania and highlights issues that require attention and priority action.

This chapter presents the selection process that culminated in the identification of five priority areas for North Macedonia’s Circular Economy Roadmap: circular business models for small and medium-sized firms, construction, biomass and food, textiles, and mining and metallurgy. It elaborates on the consultation and decision-making processes underlying the selection, offering insights into the OECD methodology employed to decide on the pertinent priority areas.

This chapter describes the selection process that led to the identification of three priority areas for Albania’s Circular Economy Roadmap: economic instruments, circular business models for small and medium-sized enterprises, and the plastics life cycle with a focus on marine litter. It details the underlying consultation and decision-making processes and provides insights on the OECD methodology employed to determine these pertinent priority areas.

Educational work is a key element for both human capital formation and the promotion of peace and democratic values. It has therefore been identified as one of the priorities of the Stability Pact. The OECD was asked to be Co-ordinator for “General Education Policy and System Change” within the Education and Youth Task Force, and to carry out “Thematic Reviews of Education Policy” in the countries of the region. The main outcome of this project is a series of reports which provide both country overviews and a regional overview. These reports offer an analysis of the education system and address issues and barriers to reform and recommendations. The recommendations are designed to be of use for national policy-makers and to assist Stability Pact partner countries and institutions target regional assistance in order to achieve the goal of supporting South Eastern Europe towards European integration. These reports are part of the OECD’s ongoing co-operation with non-member economies around the world.

This chapter focuses on the priority area that seeks to achieve a more circular plastics life cycle in Albania, with particular attention on marine litter and most common applications of plastics in packaging, construction and single-use plastic products. It provides a synopsis of the current developments and challenges within the existing policy landscape, highlights areas requiring improvement, and puts forth a set of policy recommendations supported by international good practices.