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AN OVERVIEW OF GENERAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC SITUATION IN SERBIA
with a tendency to drop out early. This is a complex process and the responsibility for it
should not be left to teachers only, but it requires involvement of the whole of society
and strong political will for set goals to be realized in practice and not to remain a dead
letter in the service of declarative compliance with European standards.
§ 63. In order to improve inclusion and mitigate the effects of global economic crisis,
pupils of the first and second grade of primary school are given free school books provided
by the Ministry of Education; thanks to local self-government, free books are provided
also for the fifth grade pupils in the territory of Belgrade.
§ 64. Until the introduction of mandatory pre-school education in 2006, the coverage
of children with preschool education in Serbia was very low: 37.3% in 2004 and
39.2% in 2005 107 , resulting from both inadequate availability of preschool institutions
and lack of awareness of significance and need for this kind of education. Moreover,
criteria for the enrollment of children in public preschool institutions (with subsidized
price) are not equalized and often discriminate against some categories of parents, e.g.
children. Advantage is often given to children with both working parents, in which way
a large segment of children, whose parents moonlight or are unemployed, is excluded;
unemployed mothers, if they want to find a job, need to organize baby-sitting, and the
like. In some cases, advantage is given to children who have been in the waiting list for
a longer period of time, although family’s material position does not indicate a need for
state subsidy. Such situation is expected to change after the beginning of implementation
of the new Law on Preschool Education, which provides for equal right and access to all
forms of preschool education without discrimination on the grounds of gender, social,
cultural, ethnic, religious or any other affiliation, place of permanent or temporary
residence, material or health status, developmental challenges or impairment or on any
other grounds. Also, in the period 2004-2009, the number of preschool institutions grew
considerably, but capacities are still insufficient with significant regional differences. The
status of private preschool institutions is still not regulated and data on the number of
children who attend these institutions does not exist 108 .
§ 65. Particularly worrying is the quality of education our children acquire in school.
Although there is a principal agreement on the necessity of reform of the education
system, little progress has been made in that area in practice. In spite of traditional belief
that our education system, with all its shortcomings, at least provide pupils with excellent
general education, the reality seems to be quite different. Namely, according to OECD’s
PISA 109 2006 results, Serbian secondary school pupils ranked 41 st for the second year in a
row 110 . The PISA test shows the efficiency of an education system, because it assesses how
much 15-year-olds are able to practically apply knowledge they have acquired in primary
107
DevInfo.
108
Annual reports on the child rights situation in Serbia published by the Child Rights Center.
109
Program for International Student Assessment.
110
Vreme Weekly, issue 885, 20 December 2007.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA - Report for the period 2000-2010 31