If that's fine with you, then nothing

All roads lead to Ministry of Education, that is the essence of education policies in Serbia in recent years. There is increased centralization at work education and control of teaching staff, accompanied by increasing passivation of children and parents. In those few trends one could also describe the new Draft Law on the Basics of the Education System (ZOSOV), the most important document for this area. For days, the profession has been talking about the disputed points of this draft.

To begin with, the public hearing was more like a spy thriller. It was held behind closed doors, with mobile phones suspended and media strictly prohibited. In addition, only one discussion was organized and that was during the summer vacation.

There are many objections. For example, the proposal deletes from the law the explicit right of students to join different groups and clubs, while the Student Parliament is extremely marginalized. His representatives would attend School Board meetings only at the invitation of the president and only when discussing strictly defined topics. The same fate would await the Council of Parents - the number of members would decrease, and the already modest competences would be further narrowed. The dangerous news is also intended for the teaching staff: principals would be given the power to independently suspend the license of teachers, without any independent professional assessment. With the previous legal solution, the minister got the final word when it comes to school principals.

By adopting those proposals, Professor Aleksandar Baucal, head of the Department of Psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, tells "Vreme", schools would, in short, become a worse place for children, teachers and parents. The experiences of European countries, as he explains, show that the centralization of management threatens the quality of schools. We in Serbia are already seeing its negative effects, and the new draft would intensify it even more.

"If the school is just an 'outpost' of the Ministry, then it will not provide quality education to its students. In a centralized system, the school is not part of the local community, but becomes a kind of embassy of the Ministry in the local community", believes Professor Baucal, further explaining that, just as the ambassador of a country in Serbia is more careful to align with the interests of his government, so school directors in the centralized system are more concerned with the interests of the minister than with the interests of students and teachers. If the government was interested in the well-being of students, teachers and society, it would act in the opposite direction - towards school autonomy.

photo: marija janković

"Through these changes, the current government is telling us that it believes that schools belong to the party in power and not to the citizens, and that they are ready to sacrifice the interests of students and society in order to achieve their party interests," Baucal assesses.

The first of September is approaching, the beginning of the school year and the time for that catchphrase Peščanika - if you are fine, then nothing. How are primary schools in Serbia? What are the painful and what are the bright points of primary education here? What kind of tomorrow awaits us?

DISCONFORMITY BETWEEN THE CLASSROOM AND LIFE

One of the striking problems is the large number of functionally illiterate fifteen-year-olds. Namely, according to PISA data, every third eighth grader is functionally illiterate. This means that they cannot understand the whole message, connect what they have heard with other knowledge, apply what they have learned, step out of repeating facts... In other words, there is a mismatch between the classroom and life.

For years, experts have been warning about the key causes: the insistence on reproducing what has been learned and too extensive material, loaded with unnecessary details, especially in a time when entire worlds are available in a few clicks.

How to eradicate mere reproduction as a learning model? One is individual enthusiasm, creative individuals who give their soul in order to develop creativity and free thinking in children, support them in what they are good at, teach them to distinguish the important from the unimportant, encourage empathy and conversation. However, how should the overall system support such teachers?

The basis for that change, Professor Baucal points out, already exists in strategic and legal documents, our experts know how to apply it, and you can always look to the countries that have gone that way: "The key steps are to provide schools and teachers with autonomy, reduce programs to the most important contents, adequately equip schools and provide teachers with continuous professional support."

Such a change is possible within five years, but it would have to come in the synergy of universities, teachers, unions, students... The reason why it does not happen, according to Baucal, is the lack of political will at the top of the government, to which less educated citizens are more responsive.

THE GAP IS GETTING DEEPER

For the sake of comparison, on the PISA test, even 36 percent of students from Serbia did not reach the basic level of reading literacy, while in the EU that result is an average of 26 percent. In mathematics, the ratio is 43% to 29%, while in science, 35% of pupils in Serbia do not reach the basic level, and 24% in the EU. As Srđan Verbić points out in the BOŠ text "Talks about negotiations", the achievements themselves are not so much a problem "as the worrying share of students without basic competencies. "In other words, Serbia educates part of its students relatively well, but it is not able to ensure that all students reach at least a basic level of reading, math and scientific literacy", concludes former Minister Verbić.

At the same time, there are more and more fives. At the meeting held in 2021 at SAN, data was provided that in the three previous school years, 40-45 percent of students had excellent results, and 14 percent obtained Vuk's diploma. When these two pieces of information intersect, the question arises - what do the grades show, that is, what are they a measure of?

In the publication "Key data on education in Serbia" (2021), Ivan Ivić, Ana Pešikan and Aleksandar Kostić cite the absence of objective, external evaluations of knowledge as a weak point. Analyzing the results of the final exam - as practically the only such check - they concluded that, if the average number of points on the final exam is 11 out of 20, then it is a serious alarm.

Does anyone hear him? Does anything change?

The results from the 2024/2025 school year (Institute for Evaluation of the Quality of Education and Upbringing, ZVKOV) say the following: the eighth graders had 11,59 points in the final test in Serbian language and literature, 11,78 in mathematics and 13,83 in the third test; every eighth grader has a "Vuk Karadzic" diploma, while, for example, in Nis and Leskovac every fifth grader is a Vukovac. The author of the report points out that, although there is clearly a connection between grades and achievement on tests, one would expect it to be more striking.

Finally, when it comes to the analysis by districts, more than half of the districts have below-average achievements on all three tests, which is also a data that is repeated from year to year. This difference between the regions raises the question of the fairness of the local education system. There is a marked inequality of Roma children, children from the poor, and families with a low level of education and from rural areas... For example, on the PISA test from a few years ago, 53 percent of children from poorer families remained below level two in mathematics, compared to only 23 percent of their peers from families with a high socioeconomic status; it is similar with reading literacy, where the ratio is 51 to 22 percent. This fact especially worries Professor Baucal: "Children from less developed municipalities and from poorer families are exposed to a much greater risk of functional illiteracy." In this way, children who were born into poverty practically have a reduced chance of one day getting out of it.

ABOUT SOWING AND HARVESTING

Research clearly shows the correlation: the more investment in education, the better student outcomes. Therefore, the attitude of a country towards education can be well read from two data: how much money it allocates and what exactly it is spent on. For years, that budget has been around 3,5 percent of GDP, while in the EU it varies from 4,5 to 7 percent.

An additional problem in Serbia lies in the fact that as much as 90 percent of those funds go exclusively to the salaries of educators, and the rest to the improvement of teaching, the equipment of schools... This kind of policy is not only irresponsible towards the future because it sends the message that education is irrelevant, and even, if other moves of the government are taken into account, undesirable, it is also self-destructive from the point of view of economy and development, because a poorly educated population in the modern division of labor necessarily gets the better end of things.

This (non)allocation of funds from the budget can be seen even in the most basic way: at one time, in the research of Cinsa, it was stated that in at least 87 school buildings there are no toilets or sinks, and that number is growing. In most schools, even in Belgrade, parents buy soap and toilet paper, and the condition of the toilets is such that children avoid going to them at all. And that's where the talk about modernizing and equipping classrooms, development projects, various devices and halls already becomes somewhat futile. Finally, here, apart from the absence of political will to develop the education sector, is also the position of that ministry in the distribution - it is mostly a ministry for pocketing money; the education system is like a never-ending spiral of unfinished reforms.

"In order to break the cycle in which each new minister begins his 'own' reform, the National Education Council should be revitalized as an umbrella professional body that would ensure the continuity of the reform despite changes in government, which are quite normal in a democratic society. It must be staffed by experts of professional integrity who can be trusted by teachers, parents, directors and citizens," Professor Baucal believes.

SOME NEW KIDS

In the aforementioned SANU publication, it is stated that half of the teachers in primary and secondary schools do not have a permanent employment relationship. In the previous two years, the large number of dismissals clearly showed how much it actually serves as a mechanism to keep the teaching staff "obedient". The new draft would only make the situation even more unbearable.

"We expect teachers, who are highly educated people, to educate our children and prepare them for their future, while at the same time we treat them mainly as executors of overcrowded programs, we overwhelm them with administration and leave them less and less professional autonomy. Salaries are an excellent illustration," says Aleksandar Baucal.

Namely, teachers' salaries are below the national average: in 2026, a novice teacher received 111.467 dinars, and a teacher with 30 years of experience received 132.670 dinars. And according to the data of the Republic Institute of Statistics, the average net salary of employees with qualification levels 7 and 8, which teachers have, was almost 160.000 dinars.

Academician Vladimir Kostić once published an article on the future of education in Serbia under the title "Will only masochists teach our children", and he began it with the words: "In my father's village, and this is not apocryphal, only the teacher was called 'sir'... Today, however, we have placed them on the margins of social importance, we pay them poorly, and sometimes we even beat them, ourselves or our neglected children beat them, if they do not come up against the primarily parental nonsense."

Already today, a big problem is that there is a shortage of natural science teachers; when these older generations retire, only then will it be seen how much space has been erased.

However, in the sea of ​​bad, there is some good news - the big surprise of this enrollment period is the Faculty of Teacher Education in Belgrade, where interest has grown so much that there will be no second enrollment round.

How does Professor Baucal see it? "Despite all the difficulties we talked about, there are young people who still want to be teachers and who believe that this calling makes sense. I believe that the student, teacher and civil protests contributed to this. Our duty to them is to finally change the state of education and to leave them schools where they can be good teachers, and not obedient officials of some future government."

photo: private archive

The story of the gardener Peđa

We read. Professor Kosta Vujić's hat. Almost every story about professional and life success hides that one teacher who opened up worlds to students. Parents know the depth of gratitude towards those people who are good gardeners for their children. Hence, any analysis of the education system would be incomplete without those individuals - and there are some - who make a difference.

Predrag Starčević is a teacher from Pancevo, recently retired. Much could be said about him, but briefly, a few biographical sketches: he completed Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem; he received the "Enlightener" award from the Alek Kavčić Foundation, and the money from the award goes to the "Caravan of Compassion" - Peđa travels around Serbia, visits schools and tries to develop compassion among young people. He held workshops for children with special needs and autism, children and adults affected by war, as well as adults with disabilities. He is the author of the book Bridges of friendship. He wants to go to Africa, where he would work with children from war zones or teachers who work with them. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Myeloma Association of Serbia, which is currently fighting for innovative drugs: "In 2024, we won a single innovative drug, and in Europe, over 10 innovative drugs are used for this rare type of bone marrow cancer."

That's all Peja. And we start the conversation precisely with the topic of compassion.

"When the nineties began, I questioned myself about what the true values ​​were. I wandered a little, but later I became sure: all the dark historical waves will pass, and those values ​​are timeless. Only compassion can change Serbia and the world. It would be the right thing to introduce the language of compassion in schools.

He follows up on that by remembering what marked him forever: during those war years, he took children who were left without parents in the conflicts to Greece. He was there for months. And that's why, when he enters the classroom and sees that someone has knocked over a chair or climbed on a bench, just think - may these children be healthy.

Is being a teacher a job or a calling, I ask.

"Mission, answers teacher Starčević. "Because we don't just teach children arithmetic operations and material, we teach them those permanent values. We teach them to enjoy life. It is also important that, when they do something successful, they experience that feeling of joy, that they find time for feelings."

Then, there is the educational moment: developing social and emotional intelligence, building a collective through the awareness that every child is different, but that in such a collective, everyone has their place. The expression about teachers-gardeners whose seeds are accepted somewhere and somewhere not, but who have to water those plants-students with love and respect, because respect is an important part of love in every relationship, I heard it from Starčević.

But how to do it all in one rigid system?

"From the very beginning, from the very first lesson, when there was a text in the reading books about Comrade Tito warming a wounded soldier, I had the courage to introduce innovations. I started by playing classical music for the children in the lessons. We decorated the classroom while we were working The little prince: the children made collages, we painted a mural on the wall, they brought fish and aquariums, birds, a terrarium with insects, a hamster and many plants."

As for the material, he didn't process everything, and because of that approach, he never had a bad experience. Once, at a parents' meeting, there was a discussion about him being too gentle with the students, to which one mother replied: "He's not gentle, he just has his own priorities."

When it comes to material, he had two priorities. The first was to read all the reading material from the first to the fourth grade, where he also introduced the reading material by choice, in addition to the Ministry's recommendations, so the children presented the books they liked. The second requirement was a thorough knowledge of the multiplication and division tables, as well as addition and subtraction. "In everything else, I insisted on cause-and-effect relationships and logical thinking," explains Starčević.

He singles out the interdisciplinary nature of teaching as another important item. That seemingly difficult word in practice means exactly the development of creativity. One teaching unit is covered - there is a text, so the child will draw something based on it, music will accompany it, and then he will be able to write his own story and combine it all with dance.

The problem, he believes, just like many others, is that the curriculum is too bulky and rigid, and the textbooks are full of unnecessary facts. That program must be unloaded.

He also gives a vivid example: "In the fourth grade, we divide seven-digit and eight-digit numbers into three- and four-digit numbers for several months. In class, you hardly manage to do two or three such tasks, provided they are not textual. First, the teacher sweats so that the child doesn't go home with a mistake, then the child sweats, and finally the same homework is waiting for the parent at home."

Finally, Peđa's priority is to ask how the child is doing. And does the system give the teacher that time? This is where we come back to compassion. There has always been something to kill children or pull their hair. "It is crucial that such problems are solved through conversation: how do you feel, and how does the person you hit? And how do you feel when you hear it? Then, how do the other children who watch it feel. At first it is more difficult, especially with children who are used to aggression at home, but later they take over this model of conflict resolution. From the fifth grade, they can do it on their own," Starčević points out.

Even today, he asks his former students how they are, follows their life paths and is proud of what they have become. "It's happiness when our children outgrow us," he says, then laughingly adds that his successes, and the way they are as experts and as people, also have his merits.

That is why, as he points out, he supported the students at the first protest they organized in Pancevo, because they are his students for life. And how does he see his former students, those students who have been in the center of social attention for the last two years?

"So much creativity, intelligence, charm of young people... And on the other hand, those who were silent in their shells for years woke up. As a member of the International Academy of Ethics, I wrote a paper about them and every night I would cry."

Why did the students cause so many tears? "All these years, from the nineties onward, we are only taught to defend ourselves. Such a value system has been established that you will succeed in proportion to how much you attack or insult someone. Our people are not used to receiving beauty. And then you see students, and such youth, and such strength... That beauty strikes a man to the core of his being and brings tears. And tears always come from love."

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