The struggle of the employees of the primary school “Ivo Andrić” – the Society continues

Employees of the Belgrade primary school “Ivo Andrić” said yesterday that they would not agree with the director of the imposed school and demanded that the law be respected.

Photo: Private archive

They point out that the Ministry of Education violated the law because the deadline was passed in which the Minister of Education Mladen Šarčević was supposed to sign the consent for the election of the director, and instead of appointing a candidate who obtained the majority of votes In the Teachers Council and School Board, the Ministry sent a new acting principal to this eight-year-old boy.

Employees boycotted yesterday’s Teachers Council session, which was supposed to take place electronically through the Zoom app. They gathered in the schoolyard and turned on the microphones on their cell phones, resulting in a widespread cacophony, while, as we were told, the acting principal, who was at the school, said what she intended.

– We do not know what is behind everything and that does not interest us, we are only asking that the legally prescribed procedure be respected. If the opinions of the Teachers Council and the School Council are not respected, then the legal provision according to which these two bodies declare themselves should be repealed, because it is a waste of time and we have no influence on the final decision. We have seen in the examples of many schools that the same things happened and that colleagues had no way to cope. After the injustice we experienced, we are expected to enter the classroom and talk to our students about democratic values, says Sandra Radovanović, teacher at the primary school “Ivo Andrić”, for Danas.

Snezana Romandic, chairperson of the Belgrade board of the Education Workers’ Union, of which this school is a member, believes that the background of the whole story is an internal dispute between the Ministry of Education and the local self-government, which would like to control the work of all schools in its territory. She points out that it is not just who will be the principal, but the interest of 1,200 students and their parents is obviously not being considered, who do not have information about what the classes will be like a few days before the start of the new school year.

Jasna Janković, president of the Union of Education Workers, recalls that the Minister of Education, at the beginning of his mandate, in the first meeting with the unions in August 2016, promised that he would never allow the director to be appointed against the will of the collective.

– To date, the Minister has broken his promise on countless occasions. If he didn’t know what he was saying or if the party pressured him not to keep his promise, that’s a question for him. Nobody cares about the quality of education and good interpersonal relationships anymore, but everyone only has one party in mind, Janković points out to Danas.

Let us remind you, the problems in “Andrić” began with the departure of the former director Milan Pašić to the Ministry of Education, and in his place a acting director was appointed who was not from the collective. Even then, he began a silent boycott of the employees, who supported “his” candidate, the Serbian language teacher at this school, Dragana Dejanović Kovačević, in the contest. It also received the support of School Board members from the ranks of employees and parents, while three members appointed by the local self-government left the session in which the vote was taken, unhappy that the vote was not secret.

Although it appeared that the situation was “clean” and that the Minister of Education would make the decision for Dejanovic Kovacevic to be the director, the Ministry appointed a new interim director.

Ministry: students for teaching in schools

The largest number of students in Serbia decided to attend school as of September 1, while only 3.7 percent of students decided to attend classes from home, that is, online, the Ministry of Education announced.

“In the first cycle of education, 3.1 percent of students from first to fourth grade decided to follow classes from home, while 4.3 percent of second cycle students opted for this type of teaching “, it was said in the ad. It should be added that “37.9 percent in the first cycle, that is, 479 schools, decided to teach complete classes, and 299 schools, that is, 23.7 percent, decided to divide into two groups.” They also point out that some of the schools will use a combination of the models proposed at the individual class level; some classes run in full composition and others are split.

“In the second cycle, 31 percent of the schools, that is, 392 of them, chose to teach classes in full, 30.5 percent of the schools (383) by dividing them into two groups, while 314 schools opted for another model ”, he specified. it’s in the statement.

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