Minister Suggests Jovina Gymnasium Return to Church
Education Minister Dejan Vuk Stankovic said returning Jovina Gymnasium to the church that founded it could be one solution. Classes have been held outside the building for a year.
Jovina Gymnasium in Novi Sad could be handed over to the Serbian Orthodox Church, Education Minister Dejan Vuk Stankovic said on August 3 during an appearance on Informer television. The school in question is the Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj Gymnasium, whose building was shut down as unsafe and whose students spent the entire previous school year in classrooms borrowed from other schools.
The minister presented the idea as a possibility, without a deadline and without describing how it would actually be carried out.
Maybe the solution is to return it to the church, which would establish an order that would have both an educational and a spiritual dimension, and would bring back the spiritual substance of secondary education in Novi Sad
In the same appearance, Stankovic said secondary education in Novi Sad is being battered by day to day politics and by what he called “Vojvodina separatism.” The church enters that sentence twice, once as the school’s founder and once as the institution that would bring order to a school that, in the minister’s assessment, currently lacks it.
How the school ended up with a closed building
The crisis at Jovina Gymnasium has been running since late 2024. Some students left classes at the time to join the daily 11:52 minute of tribute to the victims of the canopy collapse in Novi Sad. The school then apologized in a statement to then Prime Minister Milos Vucevic, whose son attended the gymnasium, and announced disciplinary proceedings over the politicization of students.
Students responded by blockading the school and drawing up a list of demands, including withdrawal of that apology. The blockade was followed by suspensions of professors who had backed the work stoppage. Through the 2025/2026 school year, classes were held in the buildings of three other Novi Sad schools after the main building was closed as unsafe. The entire year passed without a single class held in the school’s own classroom.
Some parents have spent months demanding the removal of director Radivoje Stojkovic. Their complaints include:
- poor management of the school and a deepening crisis
- the suspension of several professors
- decisions made without dialogue with staff and parents
The director rejects the accusations and says he is acting in line with regulations. Parents have also appealed to the Ministry of Education, and several protests have been held over the situation at the school.
Who is responsible for Jovina Gymnasium?
The answer is not the ministry, or at least not the ministry alone. Legal authority over the operation of the gymnasium rests with the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. Handing the school to a religious community would not be a personnel decision or an oversight measure, but a change of founder, a matter that goes well beyond a single television statement and requires the consent of a level of government the minister did not mention in that statement.
The proposal should therefore be read on two levels. The practical one is narrow and measurable: who will run a school that has been operating outside its own building for a year. The political one is wider: by mentioning separatism in the same sentence as a Novi Sad gymnasium, the minister turns a dispute over the school’s leadership into a debate about the relationship between Belgrade and Vojvodina, in a year when that relationship is already being tested on nearly every issue.
Deadlines that won’t wait
Dates are more concrete than an idea. Director Stojkovic’s term expires in November, and the minister had earlier announced that a competition for the school’s leadership would be opened in July. July has passed. Less than a month remains before the new school year begins, and it is not known whether students will return to their own building, or who will be waiting for them there.
If the proposal about the church holds up, the first measurable sign will not be another statement but an act: a competition announced, a decision by the province, or a report on the building’s safety. Until then, what remains is a sentence spoken in a television studio, about a school that has had no roof of its own for a year.
