Will there be anyone left to teach our children?

Before the enrollment of this year's freshmen at state universities, forecasts about the number of their applications and the level of occupancy of the planned places are once again gloomy. The story is already known: year after year, the number of freshmen at all state universities in Serbia is decreasing, but there is a sharp drop in teaching majors.

For the studies of basic scientific disciplines, which in the largest percentage educate and provide future teaching staff in fundamental, general education subjects, the interest is the least, even reduced to the absolute minimum. Hence the question, will there soon be teachers of mathematics, Serbian, physics, chemistry, biology, history, and geography in schools? If there are, with what educational qualifications will they perform that job?

FULL CIRCLE OF PROBLEMS

Assessing that this is a hot topic in society that has far-reaching consequences, a group of eight deans of the University of Belgrade, the Association of School Directors of Serbia, the Union of Trade Unions of Education Workers of Serbia, the Trade Union of Education of Serbia, GSPRS Nezavisnost and the Trade Union of Education Workers of Serbia more than a year ago they created a platform for saving education, which was supposed to resound like a gong at the very top of the educational system and be the beginning of solving the long-term and deep educational crisis. The platform, which was signed by the deans of the Faculty of Philology, Chemistry, Philosophy, Mathematics, Geography, Biology, the Faculty of Physical Chemistry and the Faculty of Physics, was adopted by the Senate of the University, but the Ministry of Education has not offered anything as a solution to date, so it has not yet provided initial statistical data. the information that the creators of the platform were looking for - how many teachers are currently lacking in Serbia.

On the other hand, the Ministry of Justice, due to unfortunate circumstances, showed at least some listening to educators, and that by amending the Criminal Code. After a series of brutal physical attacks on teachers, they were granted the same protective status as lawyers, which specifically means that students who are violent towards them can now be punished with prison or that their parents can also be held accountable. Thus, the circle is closed: because it does not solve the long-standing pressing reasons for the lack of teachers and their deteriorating social reputation, the state suddenly found itself in an urgent situation to protect the bare lives of educators and "protect their heads" from the violence of their students.

As a result of all that, the number of young people interested in educational study programs is already at its lowest limits. Admittedly, the trend is in the same direction at state faculties in general. Let us remind you that in the last school year, only four faculties (FON, ETF, Architecture and Security Faculty) managed to fill all the places in the first enrollment period. In addition to them, the prescribed budget quota was filled by seven of them (Faculty of Political Sciences, Faculty of Economics, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Sports and Physical Education, Faculty of Pharmacy, Dentistry and Faculty of Veterinary Medicine).

The authors of the platform for saving education, primarily the deans of the most deficient faculties, presented even more drastic data at the round table held in May. Professor Dr. Goran Roglić, dean of the Faculty of Chemistry, stated that in 2015, 26 students enrolled in chemistry, and in 2023, a total of three students. In 2015, 26 students enrolled in physics, and in 2023, only seven students. "There is a similar situation at other faculties from our group", said prof. Roglić, "but it is dominant in teaching areas."

At the Faculty of Geography, according to the data of the dean, prof. Velimira Šećerova, Ph.D.: "Since 2015, when we filled the entire faculty in June without any problems, we have reached a situation where in 2019, 65, and last year, 21 students enrolled in the pure geography major."

Dean of the Faculty of Philology prof. Dr. Iva Draškić Vićanović confirms that the situation is the same at the Faculty of Philology: "The biggest decline is recorded in the Serbian language and literature", because in the future students here see themselves primarily as teachers, i.e. professors. "The others don't. We have a full English course, but none of the English students will be an English teacher afterwards. There is also a great interest in German language studies, but no one wants to teach German afterwards. These are frightening facts. Therefore, the schools will soon be empty".

And not only schools, that is, could it happen in the future that even individual buildings of these deficient faculties could be closed? State grants for material costs of the faculty are at the level of 10 years ago, says the dean of the Faculty of Geography. Even then, low and insufficient, that level has now reached 20-30 percent of the faculty's material costs. "Richer faculties will cover it from their own income, although that's not a solution either, in the end why would they do it, but it's okay if they have to, however, those who don't have it will end up in a situation where they have to close buildings, because they simply won't have to pay."

At those so-called poor faculties, from which the teaching staff for general education subjects is recruited to the greatest extent, the teaching departments are almost empty. "All our faculties carry these courses on their backs," says the dean of the Faculty of Chemistry. "We are obliged to pay the costs of accreditation, which with self-evaluation and everything else amount to 500.000 dinars. We hire teachers for the subjects of pedagogy and psychology, which are mandatory by law, and that's all the cost we bear. The state finances us according to group norms. The group norm for natural sciences is 70 students in the first year. If we enroll these three students and organize classes for them, we are not financed by the state. We asked to recognize the specificity of teaching courses if the state wants us to continue the education of those personnel." Only, until today, the state has not recognized this problem.

We are talking about deep tectonic disturbances in our education and it is about its systematic destruction, according to prof. Dr. Ana Pešikan Avramović from the Faculty of Philosophy, so, as she said, the solution cannot be found at an individual faculty or teaching faculty, but must be found together with decision makers and the Ministry of Education. She stated that all the numerous researches related to teaching professions as a result showed, firstly, that you cannot do without a teacher, with all the online technologies, which was learned from research on teaching and learning in the age of covid - and secondly, that the teacher is a key factor quality of education.

"In Serbia, existing and now future personnel are being systematically destroyed," concluded Professor Pešikan Avramović.

2015. The 2017. YEAR

Two years are crucial, in which the state, with a set of measures and laws, made the profession of teacher, professor, one of the most undesirable. Running away from education and running away from studies that mainly refer to education have become more and more massive since then. What was observed and which was the same for all faculties, is that since 2015, enrollment in teaching programs has started to drop drastically.

What happened in 2015? "Probably more was superimposed", believes professor Šećerov, dean of the Faculty of Geography, "among other things, the ban on employment in the public sector, the reduction of wages in the public sector, but also the new generation of young people who are extremely pragmatic compared to previous generations and are primarily towards future financial security.”

In the teaching job, as things stand at the moment, they do not find security in that sense. We are the only country, according to professors, perhaps the only one in the world or among the few in the world, which has a below average salary for teachers. It is clear, as they say, that educators are not rich people anywhere, but everywhere in the world the average of their income is 1,3 to 1,5 of the average salary, which in our conditions would mean, compared to the declared average salary, which is now around 800 euros , approximately 1100-1200 euros, which might be motivating for many people to do the job.

"If you knew how to do something better in life, you wouldn't be doing this for such little money!" - you can often hear students addressing teachers, reports from the field show. "It is a complete destruction of the teacher's authority," claims the dean of Philology Professor Draškić Vićanović, "and we all know that a society shows the dignity of that profession by the amount of money it invests in a profession, it shows how it values ​​it."

With their dignity destroyed by the state, under enormous pressure from the students' parents, often without the protection of the principal, but also exposed to increasing verbal and physical violence from the students themselves, teachers have long since started to leave classes. Apart from the smaller number of those who are at the same time of quality, but also with strong authority, thanks to which the education system seems to be the only one still standing, the chronic shortage of staff has made some different teachers start to take the places of those who left.

Only once, in 2018, the Ministry of Education published information that there were about 1000 non-professional teachers in Serbia and that they taught about 27.000 primary school students: 457 non-professional mathematics teachers, 239 physics teachers, 109 IT teachers, 133 German language teachers and 48 teachers of English did not have the necessary education prescribed by the regulations of the Ministry of Education. Last year, at the meeting of the Association of School Directors and the Ministry, it was discussed that non-professional teachers should be replaced by pensioners and students.

"For this reason, our first request", says prof. Roglić, "was for the state to make a cross-section of the situation, how many teachers are currently lacking in Serbia, by region. It is very important that we based our story on the regions, because in university cities the deficit of teaching staff is somewhat smaller. University towns solve math and physics problems by taking third, fourth year students, and they cover that teaching. However, what happens if we get out of the university towns? If we go to Kikinda, Crna Trava, Surdulica, Leskovac... who will they hire to teach those classes? In those places, it is not a rare situation that, for example, the art teacher covers chemistry and physics, with the explanation that he used to be a good student."

photo: m. Milenković

In the platform, the Ministry of Education was also asked to make a projection for the next five years. An example from the Faculty of Technology speaks eloquently of the need for it: when a German company came and opened a factory in Pancevo, they were looking for 40 electroplating engineers at the faculty. They were told that three to four are trained annually and that this number of engineers cannot be provided for them even in the next few years. The proposal of the group of deans was also to no longer go to student scholarships as before, where faculties receive scholarships for teaching majors, and for example more than 60 percent of students from Belgrade are studying chemistry. The problem of the region, according to the professors, would only be solved if scholarships were given at the regional level, with the obligation of the student to return and work in that region for a certain period of time.

"We really thought that it would not take much time for the Ministry," says Professor Roglić, "and that through the school administrations, they can very quickly obtain data, that is, through the unique education information system." So far, however, they have not received even such concrete information about how many teachers will retire in the next five years.

The second critical year is 2017. Due to the "unfortunate" package of laws in the field of education passed at that time, claims Professor Pešikan Avramović, the first serious and systemic measure should be the depoliticization of the work of all educational institutions. Because the laws from 2017 opened a wide avenue for political influence, and one of the most drastic changes is that since then the minister personally, and not the ministry, gives consent to the selection of school principals.

"Political influence has increased," says Professor Pešikan Avramović, "centralization has increased, which seems to me to be greater in many segments than we had in socialist times, in the one-party system." He also illustrates the application of the 2017 law on the example of the National Education Council, an institution that has existed in Serbia since 1875. Ever since then, the Council has been an independent professional body, whose function is to control, monitor, signal problems, adopt plans and programs, textbooks. This law, says the professor, abolishes that good tradition in Serbia and the National Education Council becomes a "club of friends", an advisory body of the Minister, not even of the Ministry. And that's just an advisory body. He doesn't make any decisions. "We are in the process of destroying an institution with a hundred-year tradition," says the professor.

Accordingly, it is noticeable that today, unlike in the 2000s, when among the most important educational topics was low social mobility and the impossibility of the poor, primarily from rural areas, to enroll in state colleges due to high tuition fees, things have greatly changed. Social mobility has opened some new doors for young people, changing its channels, so a state college diploma has been replaced by a party card. With that booklet, commitment and loyalty to the party, above all the one in power, many young people make their way and jump towards the highest possible social ladder. Society itself tells them that such a path is both faster and safer, and that they don't really need higher education, even at "teacher" state colleges, for tomorrow's social reputation.