Functional Review of the Ministry of Education, Science and ...

The review builds on these two lists to help the MEST build on its strengths and deal with the
weaknesses.
Organizational structure
From the organizational points of view, there are two key issues
- balance of resources (numbers of people in different areas),
- organization of the resources into units.
According to the document provided by the MEST in February 2009, the MEST employed 235 employees 2
(164 without Inspection Department) 3 organized into the Minister’s Cabinet, Permanent Secretary’s Office
(PS’s Office), 9 departments, 14 divisions, 14 sectors and some further units. For assessment purposes,
we have made comparisons of the MEST with similar ministries in 6 small EU states (EU-6) with regard to
staff numbers. The comparisons show smaller staff numbers at the MEST in general as well as in certain
areas. The situation is documented by the Charts No 1 – 4.
The Chart No 1 shows that the MEST has the smallest staff in comparison with all EU-6 ministries. The
next 3 charts show that the situation is different when looking at the staff numbers in 4 broad areas. While
the situation in education and general support areas is comparable with EU-6 ministries, the numbers of
staff in R&D area and in special support area is far lower in Kosovo than anywhere else. We think that this
is one of the reasons of poor performance of the MEST in these areas (see our findings below).
Chart 1 Chart 2
2 In fact, during the review we received several slightly different information on the staff numbers. We had to decide to take
one version for comparisons presented in the report. On the other hand, the differences in information have not been
substantial for the purposes of the report.
3 In order to not distort the comparisons, we avoid sometimes the Inspection Department containing 71 posts deployed
throughout the country from our considerations. EU-6 ministries do not contain such a department at the ministry level.
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