Serbia Center asks – are schools safe and non-violent places in Serbia?

Departmental Committee for Education of the Serbia Center Party he analyzed the state of security in schools. We transmit the party’s announcement in its entirety:

Before we really analyze the state of security in Serbian schools, it is important to know the “size” of Serbian education. Namely, there are currently 3,206 regular elementary schools in Serbia, of which 1,135 are home schools and 2,075 separate classes. About 505,000 students attend elementary schools in Serbia. There are 454 secondary schools (about 230,000 students attend them) and 67 private schools, attended by about 6,700 students. (This data is somewhat dynamic).

This “counting” did not include preschool institutions where the preparatory class takes place. After the tragic events in May that opened up many topics (How safe are children? How does the school solve the problem of peer violence? How much do parents understand the current moment? How open and honest are the relationships between parents and children? Are the normative acts that regulate school safety, really good and applicable?

No one understood the moves of the Ministry of Education regarding school safety. One of the novelties is the Rulebook on how to act in schools in crisis events, which came into force on February 22, 2024 (in the middle of the Government’s technical mandate), providing detailed instructions and measures for how to act in emergency situations.

May the 3rd is indeed displaced all traditional values ​​in the family, school and state. All actors of education, students, teachers, parents, directors are aware of this. It seems that only the state is NOT! She quickly supports the Ministry of Education to take steps that are only a semblance of some measures, and certainly cannot be called strategic. Perhaps, the most unpleasant fact is that nobody is interested in education on the Serbian political scene. A booty that no one accepts.

The number of police officers currently residing/working in schools is 6,000. An impossible figure, yet insufficient. If you look at the number of schools and shift work (taking into account that some do not have it, for example, rural remote schools), the stated number of police officers does not cover all schools in both shifts. Analyzing these figures, it seems that one policeman maintains order in at least 2 schools, if not more. Of course, schools differ in the number of students, so it is not the same to supervise a school of 5, 500 and 1,500 students. What is worrying is what does a police officer do all day at school, or better yet what are his duties at school? A completely rational question is also asked; Did the withdrawal of 6,000 police officers from the MUP system lead to (IN)security on the streets?

This Ministry headed by an experienced neuropsychiatrist had enough time to create a serious strategy for the safety of children in all cities and schools. There at their fingertips were various security solutions in other schools in the world. It was completely justified to study KiVa’s innovative program in Finland to combat bullying in schools. This program focuses on reducing, preventing and controlling student harassment of any kind, including cyberbullying. It has been declared one of the most effective and applicable in the world. Through careful reading and research, strategic responses to school safety can be found in the following states of China (Henan Province, after 23 students were injured) and in Germany. In Serbia, a rational question arises: Did blue school uniforms save our children?

The effect of the presence of the police in schools should have been to increase the safety of students and employees. Did that happen? The relationship between students, parents and colleagues in schools is anything but tolerant and without violence. Mutual respect in schools can only exist with strict obligations, but also with the rights of students, parents and teachers. Such kind of obligations cannot be imposed by a policeman in a school, and all that parade with the police is just a picture without color and without a frame. If we take into account the fact that almost all of them are newly employed, blackmailed into having to be members of the party as well as directors, everything says that behind this tragedy is a rotten system in which only with a party card an individual will have no problems, but everyone else have got. All those “others” cannot be saved by one policeman, but can only be hidden by his appearance. Now the schools are patrolled by police officers, on-duty teachers and support staff, so once again a razor, a boxer or an ax is found in a student’s bag. With the aforementioned arsenal of cold weapons, is the school as such safe? Every day we can hear about serious injuries due to fights and beatings, about suspicious types who deal anything and everything, and many other bad things that have no place either in a school, or near a school, or in any place in any city. It is easy to conclude that despite the police, the violence has not stopped.

Perhaps the solution to the accumulated problems in education is the involvement of the wider local community, and mostly parents, in the work of the school itself and for the sake of safety and all other segments of the school. Problems should be prevented and any knowledge of possible problems should be reacted to. Constant lectures to students about violence and types of violence can only help in solving such problems, but without the active participation of parents, it is difficult. Students at that age are left at the mercy of the street and everything bad that surrounds them. Perhaps the salvation of education, but also of the whole society, lies precisely in zero tolerance for violence and drugs. With the Ministry of Education like this and their attempt at a ten-month strategy, we will never know.

Departmental Committee for Education of the Serbia Center