It is the government’s job to increase budget allocations for education (and science) significantly, provide a set of laws that guarantees teachers’ safety and respect, encourage media coverage of this activity, grant scholarships to students of these subjects, help resolve housing issues etc.
To the best of my knowledge, the RS Government has yet to start working on the recommendations that were adopted – on the basis of the Belgrade University Deans’ Platform 8 – by the Belgrade University Senate, all PMF [mathematics & sciences faculties] groups in Serbia, representative education trade unions etc. We don’t have the statistics on precise staffing shortfalls, but we can deduce that some parts of Serbia are highly endangered, while others (including large urban centres) are awaited by a similar fate in the very near future.
We can also see the argument supporting this claim in the constant reductions in the number of students wanting to enrol in teacher training courses since 2015, which requires a prompt response and the securing of additional mechanisms of motivation to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession.
For their part, the faculties can also improve study programmes, modernise curricula and the ways teaching units are presented, secure adequate practical work placements and exchanges of experience with colleagues from around the country and abroad, intensify cooperation with schools, ministries and others
It is the job of the RS Government (and not only the Ministry of Education, which cannot improve the current situation alone) to increase budget allocations for education (and science) significantly, provide a set of laws that guarantees teachers’ safety and respect (that this is also being worked on from the public service media angle is an obvious attempt of the Ministry of Education to gain the status of an official body), encourage media coverage of this activity, grant scholarships to students of these subjects, help resolve housing issues etc. For their part, the faculties can also improve study programmes (adapting them to meet the needs and level of knowledge required by future teachers), modernise curricula and the ways teaching units are presented, secure adequate practical work placements and exchanges of experience with colleagues from around the country and abroad, intensify cooperation with schools, ministries and others.
Despite countries near and far also having a problem with insufficient numbers enrolling in these study programmes, it hasn’t been noted that teachers’ salary levels are below the national average, that incidents in schools and attacks on lecturers occur on a constant and almost daily basis, that admittedly unprofitable faculties lack pronounced state assistance compared to others (mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, biology and history form the basis of most other associated sciences and professions, and engaging in other, more lucrative jobs is not possible without their knowledge).
