Outgoing minister appoints Čačak Gymnasium principal with 6 votes against the staff’s 96 — teachers: “Revenge against education”

Serbia’s outgoing education minister, Dejan Vuk Stanković, appointed Katarina Majstorović as principal of the Gymnasium in Čačak, although she received only six votes from the Teachers’ Council, against 96 votes for the other candidate, while the School Board was also mostly against her, as Danas writes. The case is the latest in a series of appointments in which the Ministry of Education has disregarded the majority view of school staffs and school boards as governing bodies.

Teacher Vesna Jerotijević, a former union activist and now a councillor of the citizens’ group “Probudimo Čačak”, calls the appointment a “continuation of the agony in education”. According to her, the government was serving in a caretaker capacity when the decision was taken to appoint a principal to a full four-year term — and Article 17 of the Law on Government, as well as Article 24 on a caretaker minister, prohibits this, with the exception of appointing acting officials.

“This is dictatorship, but with silk gloves,” Jerotijević tells Danas, arguing that the staff has only the appearance of independent decision-making, while “the minister has the final procedural word”. Similar cases have occurred at the Second Gymnasium of Kragujevac, the “Filip Filipović” primary school, the mechanical secondary school in Čačak and “Miroslav Antić” in Belgrade.

Professor Tijana Kovačević of the “Josip Slavenski” Music School, herself dismissed from a principal’s post, tells Danas that the dismissals of “unsuitable” principals began in the middle of last year, after schools backed the students’ demands. “If something does not change soon, this terrible revenge against education will not stop,” she stresses, adding that the current ministry will leave behind principals without legitimacy, destroyed staffs and dismissed teachers.