With the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement on 13 August 2001, the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (henceforth Macedonia) commenced a trail towards
peace and ethnic re-conciliation. The road has so far been convoluted and marked by a
wide diversity of political manifestations depicting deeply rooted conflicts of interest.
The education sector has been almost continuously subject to ethnic tensions and
political controversy since 2001.
The purpose of this report is to analyse education as a political phenomenon in
Macedonia. It will first and foremost endeavour to assess whether recent conflicts related
to education issues emerging in Skopje, Kumanovo and Bitola in 2003 and opposition to
decisions made by the Ministry of Education and Science reflect a continuing trend of
increasing cleavage between the two major ethnic communities in the country.
Accordingly, this report places emphasis on both the ethnic context and the Ohrid
Framework Agreement with its focus on the preservation and promotion of the state as a
multi-ethnic society. Additionally, it will endeavour to analyse other important aspects of
the Agreement, such as the principles of re-integration and reconciliation and assess how
far these processes have developed in the aftermath of the armed crisis in 2001.
The second main purpose of this report is to describe whether the organisation of the
education sector, basically by keeping children from different ethnicities separated, in
fact contributes to widen the existing gap that has developed over the years. Ideally
schools and national curricula could be used as instruments in promoting mutual
understanding between different ethnic communities and serve as a tool to enhance
confidence building. However, instead of constituting means of conflict resolution
continuing and re-emerging education conflicts indicate that the cleavage between the
two largest communities is becoming deeper. The report aims at assessing whether the
physical separation of children in the education system might contribute to this
development of ethnic segregation. Besides, since there seems to exist a lack of a clear
political strategy in how to overcome recent trends of conflicts and to develop schools to
become instruments in achieving inter-ethnic integration, this political deficit will be
additionally analysed.