The only minority schools operating in the country before World War II were those for the Greek minority of about 35,000 living in the prefecture of Gjirokaster. These schools too were closed by the constitutional amendment of 1933, but Greece referred the case to the International Permanent Court of Justice, which forced Albania to reopen the schools. There was no university-level education in prewar Albania. All advanced studies were pursued abroad. Every year the state granted a number of scholarships to deserving high school graduates who were economically unable to continue their education. But the largest number of students were from well-to-do families and thus privately financed. For instance, in the 1936/37 academic year, only 65 of the 428 students attending universities abroad had state scholarships. The great majority of the students attended Italian universities because of geographic proximity and because of the special relationship between the Rome and Tirana governments. The Italian government itself, following its policy of political, economic, military, and cultural penetration of the country, granted a number of scholarships to Albanian students recommended by its legation in Tirana. There are no reliable prewar statistics on school population. The 1967-68 Albanian official statistical yearbook placed the total 1938/39 school enrollment at 56,283. Other sources placed it at over 60,000. Soon after the Italian occupation in April 1939 the educational system came under complete Italian control. The Italian language was made compulsory in all secondary schools, and fascist ideology and orientation were inserted into the school curricula. After 1941, however, when guerrilla bands began to operate against the Italian forces, the whole educational system was paralyzed. In fact, secondary schools became centers of resistance and of guerrilla recruitment, and many teachers and students went to the mountains and became members or leaders of resistance bands. By September 1943, when Italy capitulated and German troops occupied the country, education came to a complete standstill. Education Under Communist Rule Immediately upon seizure of power in November 1944, the Communist regime gave high priority to opening the schools and organizing the whole educational system along Communist lines. The Communist objectives for the new school system were to liquidate illiteracy in the country as soon as possible, to struggle against "bourgeois survivals" in the country's culture, to transmit to the youth the ideas and principles of the Party, and to educate the children of all classes of society on the basis of these principles. The first Communist Constitution (1946) made it clear that the intention of the regime was to bring all children under the control of the state. The state, constitutionally, took special care for the education of youth, and all schools were placed under state management.