From Formal Entitlement to Public Accountability: A Legal Test for Effective Access to Education in Albania

The legal debate on compulsory education often focuses on the constitutional status of education as a right and on the responsibilities of the State, family, and society. This article addresses a narrower and more operational question: how can a failure to secure effective access to compulsory education be identified and assessed as a failure of public authority under Albanian law? It develops an Albania-centered doctrinal framework —the five stage effective access accountability test comprising: identification of the applicable legal standard; definition of the concrete barrier and its effect; attribution of responsibility to a competent authority; assessment of the adequacy of the authority’s response; and examination of review and remedy The framework is tested against Article 57 of the Albanian Constitution, Law No. 69/2012 on the Pre-University Education System, the Code of Criminal Justice for Children (Law No. 37/2017), and selected European human-rights authorities, with particular attention to X and Others v. Albania. The article argues that the legally significant issue is not whether the State has fulfilled an abstract “duty to educate,” but whether the competent authority identified a concrete barrier, possessed the power and information to respond, took legally reasonable steps, and provided an effective route to review. The article does not treat every educational disadvantage as a human-rights violation, nor does it claim that European case law creates an unlimited duty to provide every educational service in every setting. Its contribution is a structured accountability test that connects domestic statutory duties to evidence, administrative responsibility, and remedies. The framework is doctrinal and requires further empirical testing; it is not presented as a measurement of current Albanian school performance. Received: 01 September 2026 / Accepted: 26 October 2026 / Published: November 2026