BILINGUAL EDUCATION AT GREEK MINORITY SCHOOLS IN ALBANIA

The Albanian legislation regarding the linguistic policies on the minorities has been drawn up taking into consideration the international and the European legislation on these issues. The right of using freely its own language is essential to every minority because it enables them to fully enjoy its granted rights, like the right of religion, the cultural, and other rights. In this respect, in the Greek minority schools in Albania, is done the bilingual education, in the Greek and in the Albanian language.
Despite the numerous problems encountered during the implementation of this process, at the end of the primary school (grades 1-9) the aim is to have the students internalize both languages at the same level. To this end, several efforts have been undertaken to further improve the programs, to have a more balanced ratio between the Albanian and the Greek languages. Special attention has been paid to the Albanian language textbooks, so that they can be more accessible to the minority students.