The Education Committee held its twenty-ninth sitting on 24 March 2011. The sitting was chaired by Committee Chairman Dr Zoran Sami, and attended by Dr Zarko Obradovic, Minister of Education and Science, Zoran Kostic, Assistant Minister of Education and Science, Dr Zoran Kadelburg, President of the Mathematical Society of Serbia and associates and Gordana Mijatovic, Deputy Director of the Institute for the Improvement of Education and Upbringing.

At the beginning of the proceedings, Minister Obradovic briefed the Committee members on the teachers’ strike. He informed the Committee that currently 1,203 schools are operating normally, while 591 have cut their classes to 30 minutes. The Minister added that the Ministry had sent a memo to all the heads of school boards and headmasters to inform the employees, school committees and parents what the Government had done and offered in the negotiations with the unions. Apart from urging the schools to break the strike and go back to the regular 45-minute classes, the memo also states that the Government of the Republic of Serbia is ready to compensate the employees whose pay was reduced due to the strike, but only after the teachers have redeemed the lost classes.

Committee Chairman Dr Zoran Sami noted that the strike has been going on for 70 days and a large number of students do not have regular classes, and that the situation must be resolved. He proposed to the Minister that the money for the teachers’ pay rise be secured through a re-allocation of funds or a budget rebalance.

The Committee members went on to discuss the cut in the mathematics class fund in vocational high-schools with the representatives of the Mathematical Society of Serbia and the Institute for the Improvement of Education and Upbringing. The representatives of the Mathematical Society of Serbia declared the current comprehensive reform of the high-school curricula bad as it reduces the amount of mathematics classes, adding that the criterion defining the requirement for mathematics classes in vocational high-schools is very strange. The representative of the Institute for the Improvement of Education and Upbringing which had been entrusted by the Ministry of Education and Science with the duty to complete the current reform explained that in the drafting of the new curricula the Institute was governed by the legal regulations defining it, stressing that the 2009 Law on the Basis of the System of Education and Upbringing stipulated the ratio between vocational and general education subjects as 60:40.

The Committee members agreed that this is a serious problem requiring the active involvement of both the Ministry of Education and Science and the National Education Council. Committee Chairman Dr Zoran Sami stressed that the current situation does not pertain to the mathematics classes alone.

After the debate, the participants agreed that, in future, the curriculum should be drafted only after it was clearly defined which vocational subjects are essential for each profession. The Committee sent an appeal to the Ministry of Education and Science and the National Educational Council to take an active part in overcoming the existing problem.

The Committee also decided to forward the Proposal of the Decision on the election of National Higher Education Council member and a Candidate List for the election of the second half of National Education Council members, to the National Assembly to be adopted.