The educational system in Serbia is usually viewed as a collection of problems that have been accumulating for decades and that often seem like insurmountable challenges. In public, we speak of an unfavourable structure of education of the population, the low level of state investments in education and the low standard of workers in education, but also obsoleteness of teaching programs, bad results on PISA tests, unequal access to education and poorly equipped educational institutions. A great number of educators also point at the centralized system and uniformity of teaching programs as some of the key problems of education. But how much and in what way are we speaking of the good education in Serbia, and how are direct participants in education – educators, thinking through ideal systems and best educational practices?

The occasion for organizing this discussion is the Prize for the Best Educators of Serbia awarded by the Association “Živojin Mišić” since 2014 with an idea that by putting the best in the foreground we can draw attention to the true values in education and give others an example of what they should strive for. We will talk with the prize winners and members of the jury about how we define and evaluate good education in Serbia; what are the challenges and difficulties of achieving good educational practice and how can they best be overcome; as well as about the importance and role of extra-curricular activities in this process; what does teacher autonomy mean; and how changes brought by the Covid-19 pandemics, teaching at a distance and the advance of new technologies are influencing education in Serbia.

Participants:

dr Iva Subotić Krasojević, Secondary Machinist and Artistic Crafts School “Tehnoart Beograd”, EduLab IFDT (moderator)
Dejan Bošković, Elementary School “Ivo Andrić” in Belgrade
Tatjana Marković Topalović, Secondary Medical School in Šabac
Predrag Starčević, Elementary School “Jovan Jovanović Zmaj”, Pančevo
Slavica Gomilanović, Elementary School “Đura Jakšić”, Oreškovica, Petrovac na Mlavi
Zorica Ivanović, Technical School in Paraćin
Vigor Majić, Petnica Science Centre
dr Srđan Verbić, FEFA, Metropolitan University, former Minister of Education