Albania's parliament convened Monday morning inside a Tirana high school classroom, with the Speaker's chair bolted to the teacher's desk and the government benches squeezed into rows of wooden pupil seats, as the fifth day of protests over education policy ended with the building itself relocated.
Under the arrangement announced by the Ministry of Education, no member of parliament may cast a vote on school funding until they have sat and passed the national graduation exam, invigilated by a retired headmaster brought in from Shkodër and timed with a kitchen clock placed on the podium. Ministers who arrive late are marked absent and made to stand in the corridor.
«We have decided that the people who write the rules for our schools should first demonstrate they can survive them,» a ministry spokesperson said. «The exam is compulsory for all deputies, including the Prime Minister, who has been assigned a seat by the window and a pencil sharpened to regulation length.»
The move has spread. Committee hearings now begin with a spelling test, the finance commission meets in the school gymnasium, and the opposition has demanded that the Speaker's rulings be graded out of twenty and returned within a week. Protesters outside have largely dispersed, having been told that the next march will be held in the schoolyard and that attendance will count toward their final mark.
By Thursday the Ministry expects to publish the results on the school noticeboard, where the lowest-scoring deputy will be required to repeat the year.