Centre for Civic Education (CCE) expresses concern to the public regarding the urgent, August, and midnight adoption of Amendments to the General Law on Education and Upbringing, whose primary purpose is to return the power to one person—the Minister—to appoint and dismiss hundreds of directors of educational institutions, thereby further centralizing and politicizing this system. The parliamentary majority’s vote for this solution is not surprising, but the unprincipled behavior of political entities should be noted.
Namely, a number of current government MPs, who were once in the opposition, have now demonstrated a betrayal of their previous positions and principles on this issue. This is particularly true for the Democrats, who, not so long ago, under the slogan “My Honour!” promised to ensure that school boards, as the true representatives of employees, students, and parents, would elect the heads of educational institutions to put an end to partisan appointments. However, the lure of power quickly transformed this into “pay the honour to the party by a quota of director positions in schools, and we abandon principles.”
The CCE reminds that for the democratization of the system, it is crucial that the directors of public educational institutions are not appointed by the minister but by the school board, with precisely defined responsibilities and powers. The case of the high school in Cetinje in 2010 serves as a warning of how “dangerous” this could be for a closed-party system. Realizing the power of school boards, the then government chose to bring education under control for the sake of party and electoral engineering by legally transferring this authority to the minister.
Since then, the CCE has advocated that the director of public educational institutions should not be appointed or dismissed by the Minister of Education. We have pointed out examples where ministers often refused to comply with court rulings or follow the recommendations for dismissal made by the Educational Inspectorate when these did not align with their party interests. We were also explicitly against the minister’s authority to discretionarily decide on candidates for the director position, as experience has shown that rarely did the best candidate receive the role, leading to a breakdown of trust in the hiring process among those employed within the system.
The CCE believed that the amendments to the General Law on Education and Upbringing from May 2023 marked a step towards understanding the proven dangers of partisan influence in schools, while also noting that the criteria for selecting members of school boards needed to be better regulated to ensure their proper functioning. The minister already had considerable legal authority to intervene. Specifically, Article 75 of the General Law on Education stipulated that the minister could dissolve the school or administrative board of a public institution if it failed to meet or perform its functions, based on a proposal from the director or the relevant inspectorate. The minister could then set a deadline for the establishment of a new board, and if a new board was not established within that period, the minister could appoint one for a period of up to six months.
Hence, the legal framework for controlling and sanctioning the (non)performance of school boards already existed, which undermines all the key arguments put forth by government MPs for reverting to the old solution. Implementing that solution required transparency and represented a more challenging path that the authorities were unwilling to take, all in the name of disciplining “dissenters” and strengthening party influence, both in the run-up to the upcoming local elections and potential early elections.
In other words, instead of improving the existing mechanism by strengthening certain legal provisions, clarifying the powers and responsibilities of school boards, and introducing penalties for violating the Constitution, laws, and regulations, it was apparently “more profitable” to revert to a solution that turns the education system into a bargaining chip for party deals, thereby continuing its devastation.
The CCE emphasizes that this is further supported by the fact that the Educational Inspectorate has simultaneously been brought back under the control of the Ministry of Education, as a second-instance body, thereby consolidating the absolute influence of the Minister of Education without any possibility of transparency or oversight in the staffing process, in an area that must be based on fair competition.
The CCE asseses that laws should not be tailored to suit any individual or political party. All of them are replaceable, and our reality has shown that this replaceability is accelerating. Unfortunately, bad legal solutions continue to cause harm long after they are enacted, and this is one such case. Ultimately, this demonstrates that we have yet to reach the level of responsible politicians and ministers when it comes to education, which in turn limits the overall progress of society and the state.
Snežana Kaluđerović, Senior Legal Advisor