The opposition claims that two inspectors from the State Education Inspectorate are running a campaign against school heads who refuse to be party loyalists. The ministry replies that this is an attempt to manipulate the public. Standing between the two statements is an institution that has not once spoken for itself.

The accusation

Jovanče Manaskov of the SDSM education commission named names at a press conference: Mirjana Naskovska and Toni Iliev. According to his claims, the two of them are carrying out extraordinary inspections in several schools based on complaints with similar or identical wording, while at the same time being promoted or rewarded.

„This process of pressure and removal of unsuitable head teachers is also under way at the Pance Arsovski secondary school in Skopje, where these exact two inspectors are operating,” Manaskov claims. He added that some head teachers have already challenged their dismissal orders, that part of the proceedings are before second-instance bodies, and that the Administrative Court has in some cases intervened and sent the case back for a fresh decision, with rulings on the merits in favour of dismissed head teachers.

The opposition asked for a review of how the inspectors operate, of the criteria for their promotions and extra allowances, and of how cases are assigned. „Schools are not party headquarters. Head teachers are not party loyalists,” Manaskov said.

The response

The Ministry of Education and Science responds that the claim about inspections being used for political score-settling and the removal of unsuitable head teachers is an attempt to manipulate the public. Their main argument is structural: the composition of the State Education Inspectorate is identical to what it was when SDSM ran the institution, yet nobody named those same inspectors back then.

The ministry points out that the inspectorate's core legal remit is to carry out regular checks on the work of educational institutions and to act on complaints and initiatives from citizens, which are assigned according to available staffing. Where irregularities are found, measures follow.

The ministry also steered the discussion back to its own figures: over 70 million euros invested in education infrastructure in two years, new curricula, textbooks in every subject available on 1 September, teacher salaries up by more than 20 percent and new legislation aligned with European law.

What is missing

Both sides are talking about the inspectorate. The inspectorate is silent.

And the questions only it can answer are entirely concrete and require no political judgement: how many extraordinary inspections were carried out over the past year, on how many complaints, how cases are distributed among inspectors, and how many dismissal orders ended up challenged before the Administrative Court. Those are figures from its own records, not an opinion.

When an institution leaves the answer to two political parties, it does not stay neutral - it becomes terrain. And the next time it sends an inspector into a school, the head teacher will not see oversight, but politics. That is exactly the price of the silence.