Serbia's draft school law puts teaching licences at risk

Serbia’s Ministry of Education has sent selected teaching unions a draft rewrite of the Law on the Foundations of the Education System, known by its Serbian acronym ZOSOV, and given them 48 hours to respond. The draft school law landed in late July, in the middle of the summer holidays, when school buildings are empty and union bodies rarely meet. The ministry wants the amendments adopted before the new school year starts.

Three provisions land squarely on the mechanisms that were in play during the teaching stoppages and school blockades of 2024 and 2025: suspension of a teaching licence, the removal of students’ right to organise outside the student parliament, and a much smaller parents’ council.

A licence on the line for teachers who do not teach

The rewrite of Article 149 creates a new ground for suspending a teaching licence: a teacher who does not deliver educational work even after a written warning from the school principal. The measure runs through the principal, who becomes the first link in a chain that ends with the loss of the right to work in the profession.

For teachers who joined the stoppages of the past two years, that turns a labour dispute into a question of professional certification.

What changes for students?

Article 79 currently guarantees students the freedom to associate in different groups and clubs, alongside the organisation of a student parliament. The draft deletes that clause and leaves only the organisation of, and participation in, the student parliament. Debating clubs, environmental sections and informal student initiatives lose their legal footing.

Article 119 narrows things further. Student parliament representatives would no longer attend school board sessions as a matter of course, but only when an item within the parliament’s remit is on the agenda, and then only if the board chair invites them.

Parents’ councils cut to eight

Article 120 caps the parents’ council at eight members in primary schools and 15 in secondary schools, replacing the current arrangement under which every class sends one representative. In a larger primary school with twenty or more classes, that is a drop from several dozen parents to eight.

The body’s role changes too. Instead of considering school decisions, the council would simply be informed of them, and it loses its say on textbooks and on the school’s financial plan.

Zeljko Matic, co-chair of the Forum of Serbian Schools, said the amendments do not point towards better teaching:

The proposed amendments to the law will not contribute to improving educational work in schools. Their purpose is greater political control of schools.

Matic also pointed out that the draft says nothing about how parents’ council members would be elected, leaving it unclear how the new rule could be applied at all.

Transfers without the receiving school’s consent

Article 86 allows a student to be transferred to another school without that school’s consent. If the transfer is not carried out within seven days of the decision becoming final, the school administration, a regional arm of the ministry, picks the new school within three days of receiving the request from the school that imposed the measure.

The ministry’s answer

The Ministry of Education said in a statement that representatives of the representative teaching unions took part in preparing the draft and that the public debate will be the moment to raise objections. The ministry also says the draft is aligned with the national education development strategy running to 2030.

The opposition reads it the other way. Pedja Mitrovic, a member of parliament for the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), said the draft went to a handful of unions only, with a 48-hour deadline, during the holidays and without public debate:

It is clear that the goal is not education reform, but a continuation of revenge against teachers, students, parents and schools that refused to obey.

The deadline the ministry has set for itself is the start of the school year on September 1. Between now and then a public debate has to be called, held and closed, and the draft pushed through the government and the National Assembly. The unions that received the text had two days. The students and parents the provisions apply to have so far had none.