Photo: Milovan MilenkovićCommissioner for the Protection of Equality Brankica Janković said that there is a legal basis for all children to receive free textbooks and that the recommendation has been sent to the Ministry in order to prepare for next year.
Is it okay that students in Belgrade receive free textbooks, but students in other cities in Serbia do not have the same right? Certainly the answer is no.
The online petition for free textbooks launched by the "Kreni-Promeni" organization shows that the public has the same attitude. From August 29 to today, more than 50.000 citizens have signed the proposal that all students in Serbia have the right to free textbooks.
"Given that it is often emphasized that there are fewer and fewer of us, that it is important to have a family and as many children as possible, let's show the families that we care about them and their children and try to get them free textbooks," they said from "Go-Change" movement.
The petition will be addressed to the Minister of Education Slavica Đukić Dejanović and the Minister of Finance Sinisa Mal.
"Elementary school education is mandatory for all children in the country, and this also means that parents have an obligation to provide their children with textbooks and accompanying teaching aids," the text of the petition states.
The discussion about free textbooks has been held several times in our public, the last time with the greatest enthusiasm when the "Alek Kavčić" Foundation offered electronic versions of some textbooks (with the favor of one publisher) for free use on its website.
Professor Alek Kavčić's foundation has been promoting the idea of free textbooks for a long time.
Now the reaction came from the state itself.
Commissioner for the Protection of Equality Brankica Janković said in favor RTS that there is a legal basis for all children to receive free textbooks and that a recommendation has been sent to the Ministry in order to prepare for next year.
Janković states that he supports the Government's decision, which made it possible to provide textbooks for children with disabilities, children from materially disadvantaged families, and where it is the third or fourth child in the family.
However, although he says that he will not criticize the affirmative measure that children in Belgrade get free textbooks, he says that it is not right that in Crna Trava or Gadžina Han, where people have less means of living, they do not get free textbooks.
"However, it should be taken into account that the so-called middle class lives quite challengingly, quite hard. We need to see how to find the funds. Surely we as a state can find funds for textbooks somewhere, I believe that the Government and the Ministry of Finance could with a fair distribution based on social justice, as our Constitution says, and the Law on the Basic System of Education and Training, and the Law on Textbooks ", said Jankovic.
He believes that there will be a good will to solve the issue next year and that the question will not be raised as to why it can be done in Belgrade and not elsewhere.
As Jelena Vasiljević, member of the Belgrade City Assembly and senior research associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, stated in an article for "Vreme", the idea of free textbooks makes the most sense when it is part of a wider package of social policies and the intention to make the education system fairer.
"It happened before in Belgrade, as it happens in many other cities and regions in Europe. What drives such local policies is usually a carefully planned social policy: a long-term intention to make the education system more inclusive, and to reduce the social differences that deepen through schooling," wrote Vasiljević.
The commissioner states that she hopes that next year free textbooks will not be an issue and that they will be provided for all children, or if that is not the case, as she says, this year there were also examples of parents from Belgrade who organized themselves and passed on free textbooks to those who need them more. .
According to her, the recommendation was sent last week, and previously a detailed analysis was done and there is a legal basis for free textbooks for all children, and the Ministry was informed about it.
BG/RTS
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