The 2020/2021 school year starts Thursday with a delay, amid growing uncertainties due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The school year starts with 270,000 high school and elementary school students, among whom 19 thousand are first graders – some will attend school in-person, and most will attend online classes from home.

Students up to third grade, except those whose parents did not agree, attend school in-person. The other primary school and high school students will communicate with their teachers through the national online learning platform, which has not been thoroughly functional, but, as the Ministry of Education and Science and FINKI creators informed, weaknesses are currently being identified, removed and expected to be fully functional and to withstand the load of all users.

Education Minister Mila Carovska expects that most of the students and teachers today will be able to easily join the “Microsoft Teams” section where classes are created per class and that classes will begin with two-way communication. This “Microsoft” application will be used more actively while overcoming the weaknesses with the platform which at certain moments, as Carovska said, cannot open certain functionalities when a large number of teachers and students are logged in at the same time.