Serbia bill cuts school parent councils to eight members
A draft amendment to Serbia's education law caps parent councils at eight members in primary schools and 15 in secondary schools, and blockading students want the disputed articles withdrawn.
The Ministry of Education has drafted amendments to the Law on the Foundations of the Education System that would cap the parent council at eight members in primary schools. In secondary schools the ceiling would be 15. The current rule, under which every class group elects one parent representative, would be dropped.
The council’s remit shrinks along with its size. Under the draft it becomes a purely advisory body that cannot put an item on its own agenda. Two subjects leave its scope entirely: the choice of textbooks and how the school spends its money.
How many parents are left on the council?
Eight in a primary school, 15 in a secondary one, no matter how large the school is. The arithmetic is easy to follow. A school with 24 class groups now seats 24 parent representatives; under the draft it would seat eight. The biggest schools lose the most parent seats, because the cap does not move with enrolment.
This is more than a seating chart. A representative elected by one class group knows those parents and answers to them. A representative speaking for a third of the school has neither that mandate nor that duty, and the council in its new form cannot even raise a subject on its own initiative.
What changes for pupils
The draft also touches pupils’ rights. It deletes the law’s explicit guarantee of the right of pupils to associate freely in groups and clubs. Representatives of the student parliament lose the right to attend school board sessions as a matter of course. They would be invited only when the board discusses matters within their competence, and the draft does not say who decides what falls within whose competence.
The third disputed article concerns teachers. It introduces the possibility of suspending the licence of a teacher who fails to deliver educational work even after a written warning from the principal. Part of the public reads this as a mechanism aimed at the teaching stoppages of 2024 and 2025, although the text of the draft does not name those stoppages as grounds for suspension. We covered that article when the draft first surfaced.
Students in blockade want the articles pulled
Students in blockade issued a statement setting out, for the first time, the list of articles they want withdrawn. They are also demanding a genuine public hearing involving pupils, parents, teachers, unions and education professionals.
“We will not accept a law that reduces the rights of the very people the education system exists for,” the students said in their statement.
The same statement argues that the ministry, instead of solving the problems of schooling, is proposing changes that cut the participation of pupils, parents and teachers, and that the licence provision leaves room for pressure and punishment of staff.
Unions have no common position
Parts of the public have described the draft as payback against teachers, parents and pupils for the class stoppages of 2024 and 2025. The unions do not claim that description as their own. They say they took part only in drafting the section dealing with employees’ rights and that they have yet to take a position on the rest. The union confederation insists a public hearing be held before the text goes to parliament.
The Ministry of Education has not publicly explained the disputed articles. Ana Brnabic, speaker of the National Assembly, has said she expects the law to pass by the end of August.
A deadline that speaks for itself
As of July 30, no public hearing on the draft had been scheduled. If Brnabic holds to her timetable, less than a month remains for a hearing, for processing comments, for the government to adopt the bill and for parliament to vote on it, all during the holiday season, when schools are empty and parent councils do not meet.
There is a practical consequence that can be named now. If the law passes by the end of August, the first parent councils elected under the new rules will be chosen at parents’ meetings in September, at the start of the 2026/2027 school year, before most parents learn that the number of seats has changed.
