The education system is once again a currency for party bribery, which continues its devastation, said Snežana Kaluđerović, senior legal adviser at the Center for Civic Education (CGO).
"The Center for Civic Education (CEO), with concern, points out to the public the urgent, August and midnight, adoption of the Amendments to the General Law on Education and Training, the main purpose of which is to return the power to one person - the minister - to elect and dismiss hundreds of directors of educational institutions, i.e. to further centralize and politicize this system. The parliamentary majority's vote for this solution is not a surprise, but we should note the unprincipled nature of political entities," said Kaluđerović.
He says that a number of deputies of the current government, and former opposition, have demonstrated the trampling of earlier positions and principles on this issue.
"This especially applies to the Democrats, who, not so long ago, with the catchphrase 'Honor me!' promised to ensure that school boards as real representatives of employees, students and parents, they elect the heads of educational institutions, in order to stop party elections. But the armchairs made it quickly transform into 'the party honors me with a quota of directorships in schools and we give up the principle,'" she adds.
Kaluđerović says that it is crucial for the democratization of the system that the directors of public educational institutions are not chosen by the minister but by the school board, with precisely defined competences and responsibilities.
"That it can be 'dangerous' for a closed party system was warned in 2010 by the case of the gymnasium in Cetinje. Seeing the power of the school boards, the then authorities decided to put education under control for the sake of party and electoral engineering by legally transferring that responsibility to the minister," she adds.
He reminds that since then the CGE has advocated that the director of public educational institutions should not be appointed and dismissed by the Minister of Education.
"We also cited examples that ministers often did not want to act on court decisions, nor on proposals for the dismissal of the Educational Inspectorate that did not correspond to their party interests. We were also expressly against the minister's authority to make discretionary decisions on the candidate for director, because the practice showed that the best candidate rarely gets that position, which led to the collapse of trust in the competition institution by those employed in this system," says Kaluđerović.
CGO, he says, believed that the amendments to the General Law on Education from May 2023 are beginning to move in the direction of understanding "the proven dangerous mechanism of party influence in schools", noting that the criteria for selecting members in school boards should be better regulated in order to enabled their proper functioning.
It also indicates that the minister already had a solid legal possibility to intervene.
Namely, Article 75 of the General Law on Education stipulated that the minister can dissolve the school board, i.e. the management board of a public institution if it does not meet or does not perform its function, and upon the proposal of the director or the competent inspection, and set a deadline for the constitution of a new one, i.e. if does not constitute a new board within that period, the minister appoints it, but for a maximum period of six months. Therefore, the legal framework for controlling and sanctioning the (non)work of school boards existed, and this destroys all the key arguments for the return of the old solution presented by the representatives of the government. The application of that solution required transparency and represented a more difficult path that the authorities did not want to follow, all for the sake of disciplining the "disobedient" and strengthening party influence, both in anticipation of the upcoming local and potential extraordinary elections. So, instead of the existing mechanism being improved by strengthening certain legal provisions and clarifying the powers and obligations of school boards, as well as penal provisions if they violate the Constitution, legal and by-law norms, it was clearly more 'cost-effective' to return the solution that turns the education system into coin for party embezzlement, which continues its devastation," says Kaluđerović.
He emphasizes that this is supported by the fact that at the same time the Education Inspection was returned under the control of the Ministry of Education, as a second-level body, which "rounds off the absolute influence of the Minister of Education, without the possibility of transparency and staffing control in the field that must be based on healthy competition."
"CGO assesses that laws should not be passed in the image and actions of any individual or party. They are all replaceable, and our reality has shown that this replaceability is gaining momentum. Unfortunately, bad legal solutions continue to cause damage for a long time, and this is one of those. Finally, this shows that we have not yet reached responsible politicians and ministers when it comes to education, which limits the overall progress of society and the state," the statement concludes.
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