ABOUT THE OFFICE

In post-communist Albania, education was supposed to be a path to progress. Instead, for many students, it has become a performance—an endless exercise in appearances, grades, and credentials, with little connection to actual learning. Rote memorization remains dominant. Critical thinking, curiosity, and the pleasures of intellectual pursuit are too often sidelined.

In a country where classrooms are under-resourced and students over-tested, one of the greatest casualties has been the idea of education as transformation. What should be a journey of discovery has devolved into a box-checking exercise—get the grade, pass the test, earn the paper. Then, hope for a scholarship abroad or a job that doesn’t require leaving the country.

The damage is not just academic. It’s cultural. It’s psychological.

“We’ve created generations of students who see education as something to endure, not something to engage,” writes Hektor Çiftja, a linguist and former Fulbright scholar, in his blog post Education: The Long Road Ahead. “Not to grow, but to go—through the system, through the exams, through the motions.”

It’s a stark assessment. But in Elbasan, a mid-sized city in central Albania, Çiftja has spent the three decades quietly challenging that status quo.

The Philosophy of One Room

Hektor and Diamanta Vito- Çiftja didn’t set out to build a movement. They set out to build a classroom.

After returning to Albania from graduate studies in the United States, Hektor, and Diamanta from United Kingdom—whose background lies in literary criticism and linguistics—started H&D Consultancy, a modest educational/ consultancy center in Elbasan. Its name, like its founder, is unassuming. Its mission is anything but.

At first glance, H&D Consultancy might resemble a typical English Exams-language prep school. But spend a day inside, and the difference is striking. Students read literature, write essays, analyze speeches, and debate ideas. The goal isn’t fluency alone—it’s fluency in thought.

“We use English as a vehicle,” Çiftja writes in his blog.  “But the real aim is to awaken something deeper: independent learning, reflection, critical thinking not just Exam Preparation”

This, he says, is what’s missing from the mainstream Albanian education system: not knowledge, but method; not content, but consciousness.

A Crisis of Learning, Not Access

Albania has made measurable gains in education since the early 1990s. School enrollment is high. Digital tools have expanded. International partnerships, including Erasmus+ and Fulbright, YES, Chevening e tc  are on the rise.

But beneath the surface, a quieter crisis persists. In many public schools, classes are overcrowded. Teachers are indecently paid and often undertrained. Curriculum reform is slow and inconsistent. Exams emphasize recall, not reasoning. And in the age of TikTok and fractured attention, reading habits—once a source of national pride—are in decline.

Students, Çiftja argues in his blog, are not to blame. They are products of a system that rewards compliance over creativity, results over rigor. In such a system, even the brightest learners lose their drive.

That’s where H&D Consultancy comes in—not as a replacement for school, but as a corrective.

The Students Who Stayed—and Grew

The center’s Student Blog reads like a literary anthology. One entry analyzes the political allegories in Orwell’s Animal Farm. Another explores the emotional impact of Kazuo Ishiguro’s prose. These are not templates or test-prep samples. They are voices—real, evolving, introspective.

“This place has not only helped me pass exams,” one student writes. “It taught me how to read again. How to think in paragraphs, not just bullet points.”

Success here is measured not in test scores—though many students excel—but in shifts of mindset. Several alumni have gone on to study abroad on scholarship, others have dramatically improved their academic performance locally. But for Çiftja, the greatest achievement is subtler: the return of discipline, of self-study, of intellectual ambition.

“We’re trying to repair an educational muscle that’s atrophied,” he points out. “Once a student regains that muscle, it becomes part of them.”

In post-communist Albania, education was supposed to be a path to progress. Instead, for many students, it has become a performance—an endless exercise in appearances, grades, and credentials, with little connection to actual learning. Rote memorization remains dominant. Critical thinking, curiosity, and the pleasures of intellectual pursuit are too often sidelined.

In a country where classrooms are under-resourced and students over-tested, one of the greatest casualties has been the idea of education as transformation. What should be a journey of discovery has devolved into a box-checking exercise—get the grade, pass the test, earn the paper. Then, hope for a scholarship abroad or a job that doesn’t require leaving the country.

The damage is not just academic. It’s cultural. It’s psychological.

“We’ve created generations of students who see education as something to endure, not something to engage,” writes Hektor Çiftja, a linguist and former Fulbright scholar, in his blog post Education: The Long Road Ahead. “Not to grow, but to go—through the system, through the exams, through the motions.”

It’s a stark assessment. But in Elbasan, a mid-sized city in central Albania, Çiftja has spent the three decades quietly challenging that status quo.

The Philosophy of One Room

Hektor and Diamanta Vito- Çiftja didn’t set out to build a movement. They set out to build a classroom.

After returning to Albania from graduate studies in the United States, Hektor, and Diamanta from United Kingdom—whose background lies in literary criticism and linguistics—started H&D Consultancy, a modest educational/ consultancy center in Elbasan. Its name, like its founder, is unassuming. Its mission is anything but.

At first glance, H&D Consultancy might resemble a typical English Exams-language prep school. But spend a day inside, and the difference is striking. Students read literature, write essays, analyze speeches, and debate ideas. The goal isn’t fluency alone—it’s fluency in thought.

“We use English as a vehicle,” Çiftja writes in his blog.  “But the real aim is to awaken something deeper: independent learning, reflection, critical thinking not just Exam Preparation”

This, he says, is what’s missing from the mainstream Albanian education system: not knowledge, but method; not content, but consciousness.