Skopje, 30 October 2023 (MIA) — After recently announcing that the Bureau for the Development of Education had been given a November deadline to design the seventh-grade curriculum in line with the ongoing reform so textbooks would not be late for the 2024-25 school year, Education Minister Jeton Shaqiri said Monday that if the deadline was missed, he would demand responsibility.

"This school year, I gave them a deadline: the end of November. If the curriculum is not ready by then, I will demand responsibility," Minister Shaqiri said, adding that the deadline would leave eight months' time for writing, editing, revising and printing the new seventh-grade textbooks.

In response to a reporter's question on the sixth-grade textbooks that were to be given to schoolchildren in September but have not been delivered to elementary schools yet, Shaqiri said the reason was that the new curriculum had not been developed until March 2023.

He added that the sixth-grade texbooks, however, were now being delivered in most elementaries in Skopje and other cities.

"If there are schools that have not received any yet, I will ask my staff and the Pedagogical Service to analyze where they are, although we are not talking about the majority of schools," Shaqiri said.

"All textbooks approved by the National Commission on Textbooks have been printed and are being delivered," he said.

The education minister also said next year's textbook printing procedures would be timely because there were personnel changes in the Bureau for the Development of Education.

"We have a new director in the Bureau. He is not the same as the one during the previous school year," he pointed out.

Shaqiri also noted that "unlike last year, this school year's report card forms were not late" and that "the third-grade curriculum was developed on time and those textbooks were not late either." mr/