Serbia

Basic Data
Official Country Name:	Serbia
Region:	Europe
Population:	9,981,929
Language(s):	Serbian, Albanian
Literacy Rate:	NA
Academic Year:	September-June
Compulsory Schooling:	9 years
Foreign Students in National Universities:	1,180
Libraries:	749
Educational Enrollment Rate:	Primary: 72%
	Secondary: 63%
	Higher: 22%
Student-Teacher Ratio:	Primary: 22:1
	Secondary: 15:1
Female Enrollment Rate:	Higher: 24%

History & Background

The Republic of Serbia (Srbija ) is located in southeastern Europe, not far from the Adriatic Sea. Bordered by Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, Croatia to the northwest, Hungary to the north, Romania to the northeast, Bulgaria to the east, the autonomous province of Kosovo and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the south, and Montenegro to the southwest, Serbia in early 2001 was part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), along with the Republic of Montenegro. With its largest city, Belgrade (Beograd ), both its capital and the Yugoslav capital, Serbia has been the politically dominant republic of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the FRY. Serbia's landlocked territory measures 88,412 square kilometers, which is slightly more than the U.S. state of Maine, and constitutes about 86.5 percent of the FRY's total territory. Serbia has an extremely varied terrain with fertile plains in the north and limestone mountains and basins in the east. Serbia's climate also varies, ranging from continental (with cold winters, hot, humid summers, and significant precipitation) to Mediterranean.

The Balkan peninsula where Serbia is located was settled by Illyrian, Thracian, and Dacian tribal groups in the pre-Christian era and by Greeks and Romans before becoming the home to Slavic tribes. The Serbs, a Slavic people, migrated to the Balkans from Galicia, near Russia's Dniester River, around A.D. 637, pressed by the Avars from their original territory. Invited by the Byzantine emperor to protect Illyria against enemy invasions, the Serbs were politically autonomous though Byzantine emperors viewed them as their vassals. Converting to Greek Orthodox Christianity in the ninth century but continuing to use the Cyrillic alphabet, the Serbs established the Kingdom of Serbia during the Middle Ages. In the 1300s Serbia increased its power under Stephen Dushan, though from 1459 until the early nineteenth century, the Ottoman Turks dominated the region and ruled the Serbs. With the Ottoman invasion into southeastern Europe and the settlement of Albanian families in the Kosovo region separating Montenegro from Serbia, Serbia grew politically and culturally distinct from Montenegro, another area inhabited by Slavs who spoke a variation of Serbo-Croatian. The Kosovo region came to be viewed by many Serbs as the heartland of Serbia, as the first Serbian Orthodox Church as well as many significant Serbian monasteries and historical monuments are located there. Furthermore, key battles fought by the Serbs against the Ottomans took place in Kosovo, the most important being the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389.

In 1813 Serbia became politically autonomous of the Ottoman Empire. Its status as an independent state was fully confirmed by other European nations at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. With the political and geographical changes wrought by World War I, Serbia joined its neighbors in 1917 to form the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and the Slovenes, which was renamed "Yugoslavia" in 1929. In the interwar years Yugoslavia experienced a serious economic decline and fell ripe to the commercial influence of Nazi Germany while under the dictatorship of King Alexander, a Serb who sought to dominate the other ethnic groups in the country and was assassinated by Croatian extremists in Paris in 1934. With the invasion of the Balkans in 1941 by Hitler's troops, Serbia fell to the Axis powers after Belgrade suffered intensive air attacks. During the German occupation of Serbia, the Orthodox population was persecuted by the Germans and Croatian Ustashi fascists. A Serbian nationalistic group, the Chetniks, tried to restore the exiled monarchy but eventually united with the Ustashi. They later joined the occupying fascists to fight the communist-inspired National Liberation Movement of Tito (Josip Broz). After the war, Serbia became one of the republics of socialist Yugoslavia in 1944, which was governed by Tito, a Croat who sought to unify the diverse ethnic groups in the Yugoslav federation during his long presidency that lasted until his death in 1980.

Whereas Tito had managed to keep the republics more or less connected, after his death dissension within the Yugoslav federation over political control and the best means to address the country's growing economic problems and political unrest led to increasing discontent over the Communist system and eventually the breakup of the federation as several republics seceded in 1991 and 1992. Slobodan Miloševic, the former leader of the Communist Party in Serbia that became the Serbian Socialist Party at the close of the 1980s, was elected president of Yugoslavia in December 1990. Expanding Serbia's frontiers by incorporating Yugoslavia's autonomous provinces of Kosovo, where about 90 percent of the population was now Albanian, and Vojvodina, with a large Hungarian population, into the Republic of Serbia, Miloševic refused to accept the peaceful secession of the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia in the early 1990s. The ethnic violence that followed, coupled with Miloševic's failure to transform Serbia's economy despite his attempts at absolutist political control, arguably led to his loss of power in October 2000.

Although Yugoslavia in the 1980s had remained relatively calm politically, riots in Prishtina, the capital of Kosovo—Yugoslavia's economically poorest region—by Albanian nationalists in 1981 increased mistrust between the majority Albanian population in Kosovo and Kosovo's Serbs and Montenegrins, who were in the minority. Repression of Kosovar Albanians by Serbian security and police forces increased in the 1990s in response to Kosovar attempts to declare their province the sovereign Republic of Kosovo in September 1990 with Ibrahim Rugova, a non-violent resistance leader, as president. The reaction of Miloševic was to remove Albanians from government offices and state operations and to prohibit ethnic Albanians from attending university. Under Miloševic's influence, a new curriculum was introduced in Kosovo that featured Serbian instead of Albanian as the language of instruction and taught a decidedly Serbian view of Balkan history. Arbitrary arrests and police violence directed against Albanians in Kosovo became routine. Furthermore, economic output in Kosovo declined severely during the 1990s. The GDP of Kosovo shrank by an estimated 50 percent between 1990 and 1995, by which time the per-capita GDP in Kosovo was less than US$400, although the economy was based on industry, mining, construction, and agroprocessing with a significant contribution (about one-third of the GDP) from agriculture. The non-violent resistance movement in Kosovo created a system of parallel institutions, and education for Kosovar Albanians was provided in private homes, financed by a 3 percent tax that the Albanians paid to their "shadow" government.

Miloševic's imposition of a new constitution on Serbia that made Kosovo and Vojvodina autonomous regions within Serbia without the status of independent states ultimately led to armed rebellion by some Kosovars, notably the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), in 1996. By July 1998 the KLA had attacked enough Serbian police stations and Yugoslav army sites to take control of about 30 percent of Kosovo's territory. The Serbian state retaliated with armed attacks on Albanian villages and expulsions and massacres of ordinary Albanian citizens. The level of violence between the KLA and the Serb forces rapidly accelerated between October 1998 and February 1999, despite a United States-brokered cease-fire with Miloševic in October 1998 and the introduction of 600 (of a promised 2,000) unarmed monitors provided by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Serb forces conducted house to house searches, mass arrests, and beatings in Kosovo. A peacemaking attempt by the "Contact Group" of representatives from the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, Italy, and Germany was made in Rambouillet, France in February 1999 that involved Rugova and Albanian non-violent resistors, members of the Kosovar Albanian armed resistance, and Serbs (though only Serbs who backed Miloševic's views). Kosovar Albanians agreed to a three year period of autonomy after which Serbia and the international community would review the status of Kosovo. However, Serbia refused to accept NATO peacekeepers on Serbian soil, and on 24 March 1999, NATO began a bombing campaign in Yugoslavia to force Miloševic and the Serbian police and army to halt the ethnic violence and comply with the terms of the Rambouillet accord. Despite the presence and growth of a strong antiwar protest movement in Serbia and political opposition there to Miloševic's regime, the response from the Serbian state to the NATO attacks was a stepped-up effort to eradicate the Kosovar Albanian population. The violence on the ground wound down only after another form of violence was perpetrated on the people of Serbia and Kosovo: the massive bombings, including of civilian targets, by NATO warplanes.

With the extensive displacement of peoples on the Balkan Peninsula associated with the political and economic disruptions and ethnonationalist aggression of the 1990s, the statistical measurement of the population in Serbia and Kosovo has been severely hampered. Population counts and education-related measures for the 1990s and the early twenty-first century must thus be interpreted with caution, as their accuracy and reliability are often questionable. A new census scheduled for March 2001 in the FRY was expected to yield more accurate population counts toward the end of 2001. Bearing this in mind, Serbia—the largest of the six republics once belonging to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia—had a population in 1998 of approximately 7.8 million, excluding the population of Kosovo and Metohia. The population of Serbia and the provinces it had incorporated was estimated at almost 10 million in the year 2000. This included thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had left other parts of the Balkans due to ethnic violence and intimidation in the late 1980s and 1990s.

During the time Miloševic was in power, 250,000 persons reportedly were killed in the Balkan states, 90 percent of them civilians. From 1991 through 1995, approximately 690,000 refugees—almost half of them younger than 28 and nearly three-fifths of them female—fled the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and entered Serbia. About 300,000 people from Serbia, most of them highly educated, left Serbia in the 1990s. About 740,000 Kosovar Albanians were expelled from Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, many fleeing to nearby Albania and Macedonia. In the year 2000 an estimated 230,000 displaced persons from Kosovo as well as 500,000 refugees from Bosnia and Croatia were living in the FRY (including Montenegro). In September 2000 about 82,000 ethnic Albanians who had fled Kosovo returned to that province, although almost 223,000 Kosovo Serbs, Roma, and members of other minority groups continued to be displaced inside Serbia and Montenegro. Other counts indicated that about 400,000 refugees remained in Serbia in early 2001.

In 1910 Serbia had an urban population of 315,366, approximately 10.8 percent of Serbia's population at the time, who lived in 40 towns of at least 2,000 inhabitants each. Eighty years later in 1991 about 52 percent of the population of the FRY (Serbia and Montenegro) lived in urban areas. In 1991 the ethnic composition of Serbia was about 80 percent Serb; 4.4 percent Hungarian; 2.3 percent Bosniac; 1.5 percent Montenegrin; 1.2 percent each Croat and Roma; 1 percent Albanian; less than 1 percent each Slovak, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian, Bunjevci, Ruthenian, and Valachian; and 5 percent other (mainly "Yugoslav"). In terms of religious affiliation, in 1991 approximately 65 percent of the inhabitants of the FRY (Serbia and Montenegro plus the 2 autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina) was Orthodox, 19 percent was Muslim, 4 percent was Roman Catholic, 1 percent was Protestant, and 11 percent had other religious affiliations. About 95 percent of the population of the FRY spoke Serbian (though the Montenegrin version of Serbo-Croatian differs slightly from the main language of Serbia) and about 5 percent spoke Albanian.

In 2000 the total fertility rate in Serbia was about 1.7 children born per woman. An estimated 20 percent of the country's population was 14 years old or younger while about two-thirds of the population was between 15 and 64 and about 15 percent was 65 years of age or older. (Again, this assumes an age balance in 2000 equivalent to that in 1991, when the last census was taken. Due to large population shifts, this probably was not the case.) In 2000 Serbia had an infant-mortality rate of 20 per 1,000 live births and the average life expectancy at birth was 72.4 years (69.3 for men and 75.7 for women—a significant gender difference).

Before the former Socialist Yugoslav federation dissolved in the early 1990s, Serbia had an estimated population of 9.3 million out of a total 23.5 million for all of Yugoslavia and produced 38 percent of the former Yugoslavia's economic output. In 1999 the structure of Serbia's workforce stood as follows: 37.3 percent of the labor force was employed in industry and mining and just 4.3 percent was employed in agriculture, fisheries, and forestry; the rest were employed in commerce, crafts, and service jobs. About 8.4 percent of the workforce was employed in education and culture. That year, the FRY had an annual economic growth rate of -20 percent of the GDP. Economic outputs declined substantially in the 1990s, and the FRY stood in dire need of international economic assistance. However, international financial support to Serbia was severely limited due to the sanctions that remained in place for much of the 1990s and Serbia and Montenegro's resistance to cooperating with the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia before late June 2001, when ex-president Miloševic was extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.

In 1998 Serbia's GDP was US$16.4 million, but significant black-market and gray-market activity also existed in the FRY, complicating the accurate estimation of real economic outputs for the 1990s. GDP per capita in Serbia in 1998 was estimated to be US$2,000. In the late 1990s unemployment in the FRY went as high as 60 percent. Unemployment in Serbia in July 2000 ranged up to about 33 percent, depending on skill level and educational attainment. Unqualified workers, lower-skilled workers, and skilled workers had the highest unemployment rates (33 percent, 26.3 percent, and 28.3 percent, respectively). Near the close of the twentieth century, Serbia derived its income mainly from the industrial and service sectors with less of an emphasis on agriculture and almost no income gained from the maritime trades due to Ser bia's landlocked status.

Serbia required substantial international development assistance during the 1990s and early twenty-first century to repair the damage caused by the 1999 NATO bombings and to recover from the economic disruptions of a decade of war and international sanctions. Total economic damage in Serbia due to the NATO attacks was estimated to be about US$30 billion. Prior to a conference of international donors held on 29 June 2001, in Brussels, Belgium to discuss financial assistance for the FRY, Serbia received relatively little financial support from abroad other than through the black market and the Serbian "mafia." At the June 2001 conference representatives from about 40 countries, UN agencies, and the World Bank pledged about US$1.2 billion to help the FRY rebuild its infrastructure, including war-damaged schools, and pay the salaries of teachers and doctors.

Constitutional & Legal Foundations

At the turn of the millennium Serbia was one of the two republics (and two autonomous provinces) belonging to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, self-proclaimed on 11 April 1992 as the successor state to the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) and formally established by the Constitution of 27 April 1992. During the 1990s the United States refused to acknowledge the FRY as a legitimate country and chose instead to deal separately with the republics of Serbia and Montenegro. In November 2000 the newly elected government of the FRY, eager to democratize and build economic ties with the West, dropped the FRY's claim of successorship to the SFRY, and the international community officially recognized the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a legitimate, independent state.

Serbian law is based on a civil law system. All Serbs, women and men, are eligible to vote at age 18; 16- and 17-year-olds also can vote if they are employed. Besides participating in the election of the president of the federation, Serbs elect their own republican president as chief of state of the Republic of Serbia. Milan Milutinovic was elected president of Serbia on 21 December 1997 (although he himself was indicted by The Hague Tribunal and considered ripe for arrest shortly by mid-2001). The prime minister of Serbia in early 2001 was Zoran Djindjic, who in late June 2001 arranged for Miloševic's extradition. At the federal level, Miloševic was the president of the FRY from 1987 until October 2000 after he lost the September 2000 presidential election to Vojislav Koštunica, an opposition party candidate who ran on a platform of democratic reforms, economic improvements, and an end to corruption in the FRY. The executive branch at the federal level also includes a prime minister, several deputy ministers, and a cabinet known as the Federal Executive Council. The prime minister of the FRY in early June 2001 was Zoran Zizic, who resigned in protest after Miloševic's 28 June extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal, claiming that federal constitutional procedures had not been followed and that the Serbian prime minister had had no right to extradite the former Yugoslav president.

At the federal level the legislative branch of the FRY is a bicameral Federal Assembly (Savezna Skupstina ) composed of a Chamber of Republics (Vece Republika ) of 40 members, 20 of them Serbian representatives and 20 Montenegrin representatives, elected to 4 year terms and distributed according to the party distributions in the republican assemblies of Serbia and Montenegro, and a Chamber of Citizens (Vece Gradjana ) of 138 members, 108 of them Serbian representatives (half of whom are elected by constituency majorities and half by proportional representation) and 30 of them Montenegrin representatives (6 elected by constituency majorities and 24 by proportional representation), all of whom serve 4 year terms. The third branch of the federal government is the judicial branch, consisting of a Federal Court (Savezni Sud ) and a Constitutional Court, both of whose judges are elected to nine year terms by the Federal Assembly.

Under the Miloševic regime, the human rights situation in Serbia and the rest of the federation was notoriously poor. According to the Country Report on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia released in February 2001 by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, prior to Koštunica's election, former Yugoslav President Miloševic had brought Serbia closer to open dictatorship than ever before. Immediately following the 1999 war in Kosovo, Miloševic moved to consolidate his weakened position in Serbia through a campaign of intimidation and violence against his political opponents, representatives of the independent media, student groups, civil society, and even, in certain cases, members of the regime. Miloševic had also tried to populate federal institutions, including the judiciary, with his cronies and supporters and thus had disrupted normal politics and the progress that others in Serbia and Yugoslavia wanted to make toward democracy and transparency. Under Miloševic the FRY's security forces frequently had abused their power, terrorizing those who opposed Miloševic's policies and actions, especially in Kosovo. Students, too, sometimes became victims of police abuse. In November 1999 Belgrade police forcibly stopped the protests of 2,500 students in Belgrade who were demanding early parliamentary elections in Serbia. Dominated by Miloševic supporters, the federal legislature had the federal constitution altered in July 2000 to restrict Montenegro's autonomy and to allow one more presidential term for Miloševic. The Montenegrin government boycotted the September 2000 federal election as a result. Miloševic then manipulated the federal election commission and constitutional court in Yugoslavia to try to force a second round in the federal presidential election of September 2000 where he had been defeated by Koštunica. The response of mass rallies by opposition supporters led to the storming of the federal parliament on 5 October 2000 and the occupation of the Serbian state television station. On 7 October Miloševic finally conceded the election to Koštunica, who was immediately inaugurated as president of the FRY.

Within the FRY serious human rights problems existed in 2000, including violence and discrimination against women, trafficking in women and girls for forced prostitution, and police repression, as well as official and societal discrimination against Muslims, Roma, and other minorities in various parts of the FRY. Severe repression of political critics, student activists, the media, and political dissidents under the Miloševic regime also was a serious problem prior to Miloševic's loss of presidential power in September/October 2000, his arrest in April 2001, and his extradition in June 2001.

With the removal of Miloševic, national and international observers in mid-2001 predicted other arrests of indicted war criminals would follow in both Serbia and Montenegro and expected to see the republican governments and possibly the federal government as well adopt more cooperative attitudes toward the International Criminal Tribunal. The promise of substantial international donations to reconstruct the economies and infrastructure of the FRY following Miloševic's extradition were viewed as a spur likely to produce a more positive climate within Serbia and Montenegro for international cooperation with great potential for positively impacting social and economic conditions in Serbia. Hopes inside Serbia and the FRY and internationally ran high by mid-2001 that with Miloševic no longer dominating federal politics, the human rights climate could turn more positive and Serbia could begin the difficult task of democratizing the government and society and rebuilding the economy and the country's infrastructure, including the educational system.

Educational System—Overview

The education system in Serbia has been shaped in large measure by that of its predecessor, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and by Serbian and federal laws passed in the 1990s. Educational policy in Serbia is determined by the federal government together with the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Serbia, with cooperation in some areas from international actors, such as the European Union, UN agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. At the turn of the millennium the Ministry of Education was concentrating its efforts on making education and the management of education more democratic, improving Serbia's secondary level vocational education institutions and programs, and strengthening adult education and training. Significant efforts also were being directed toward repairing schools damaged in the 1999 NATO bombing campaign and toward outfitting schools with necessary teaching materials and equipment. According to a May 2001 publication of the European Commission's European Training Foundation, Serbia's Minister of Education sought to accomplish the following strategic goals:

1. Introduce a new model of governance based on the active involvement of a large number of actors in the decision-making process and the implementation of policy.
2. Instill radical change in the decision-making and policy-development culture within the institution by mobilizing external expertise, working in tandem with other actors, and using information on the actual state of the education system and its needs.
3. Ensure a better relationship between the Ministry and schools by shifting the focus from controlling schools to directing and supporting their performance.

Short term goals of the Ministry in 2001 were to create a more efficient internal structure within the Ministry and to develop an educational reform strategy that could accomplish three goals: make schools more democratic bodies fostering democratic education, use education to promote and achieve social and economic development, and match secondary vocational education and adult education to Serbian labor market needs.

In 1991 the literacy rate in Serbia was estimated to be about 98.3 percent in urban areas and 95.2 percent in rural areas, with an estimated 92 percent of rural women literate. Compulsory education in Serbia includes the 8 grades of primary school that are typically attended by students 7 through 14 years of age. Serbian has been the principal language of instruction in Serbia's schools, almost all of which are public. Other languages of instruction include Hungarian, Albanian, Slovak, and Romanian at the elementary and secondary levels. In the 1998-1999 school year, 37,594 primary pupils and 8,867 secondary students were taught in minority languages or in bilingual schools in Serbia.

In 1997 about 32.2 percent of the population in the FRY was of school age—that is, between 3 and 24 years of age. The 1997-1998 gross enrollment ratio for Serbia at the primary level was 98.4 percent. In 1999-2000 about 48.6 percent of the students who were enrolled in Serbia's basic education programs were girls; 50.4 percent of upper secondary students (both general and vocational) were female, as were 53 percent of the students at the tertiary level that year. Nearly 1.3 million Serbs were enrolled in primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions out of Serbia's total population of about 8 million, excluding Kosovo and Metohia for whom educational statistics are generally excluded in the European Training Foundation Montenegro's January 2001 report.

Participation in preschool programming is optional in Serbia. However, 1,661 public kindergartens existed in 1999-2000. Basic education is divided into two stages: lower primary, covering grades 1-4 for children ages 7 through 10, and upper primary, covering grades 5-8 for children aged 11 through 14. Pupils in grades 1-8 numbered 731,427 in 1999-2000 in Serbia, but the gross enrollment ratio for basic education (the free, compulsory, first 8 years of schooling) is not available for that year.

Upper secondary schooling in Serbia includes either 4 years of general education for students 15 through 18 years of age or 2, 3, or 4 years of vocational education for students starting at age 15. Specialized secondary schools also exist to provide four years of education in the arts, music, or ballet. Tertiary education is provided through university faculties and art academies for four to six years or through postsecondary schools where courses usually last two to three years. Tertiary education typically begins for students at age 19. Specialized university studies are also available that last an additional one to two years beyond undergraduate education and lead to a diploma with a professional title. Post-graduate studies leading to magisterial (Master's) degrees last two years, and doctoral degree programs require three years of postgraduate study.

Schools in Kosovo were heavily damaged during the NATO bombing raids in 1999. In a survey taken jointly by UNICEF and other nongovernmental organizations just after the NATO military campaign to halt Serb aggression against Kosovar Albanians, an estimated 37 percent of 784 schools in Kosovo were found to have been completely destroyed or in very bad condition. Water and sanitation facilities in many, if not most, schools in Kosovo also stood in dire need of repair or construction. Additionally, many school buildings had almost no equipment or textbooks. One educational expert wrote in a European Training Foundation report in December 2000 that "initially there was an overwhelming need for repair and reconstruction and as well, supplies in order to meet the immediate aim of ensuring that children returned to school at the start of the 1999-2000 school year." Technological equipment—and school equipment in general—was sorely missing from Kosovo's schools at the start of the new millennium. By January 2000, some 362 school buildings out of a total of 800 that had needed significant repairs were completely repaired and back in operation, while 281 additional buildings were still under repair. Largely through international contributions, basic furnishings and supplies were provided to schools in Kosovo so that education could be restarted after the NATO bombing attacks.

The structure of the educational system in Kosovo closely resembles the educational system in Serbia, although vocational education at the secondary level normally lasts three or four years. Additionally, the greater involvement of international nongovernmental organizations, during the late 1990s and afterwards, in Kosovo rather than in Serbia has enriched program offerings at the preschool level and elsewhere in the educational system to a greater extent. For example, since 1998 the Open Society Institute's Step by Step program has been offered in Kosovo to expand the teaching methodologies of preschool teachers and to encourage more democratic participation of teachers, parents, children, and community members in the educational process. Additionally, Step by Step in Kosovo has tended to the needs of minority children such as the Roma, impoverished children, and children with disabilities, as well as to children displaced by war. By the time the NATO bombing began in Kosovo in March 1999, Step by Step had already supported 17 preschool classrooms in preschool and primary institutions, reaching more than 1,000 young children. Following a hiatus due to the military strife, Step by Step recommenced its activities in Kosovo and planned to offer faculty in the two main teacher training institutions in Kosovo specialized training beginning in the year 2000. With the likely injection of substantial educational assistance from the international community into Serbia beginning in the second half of 2001, Serbia, too, will benefit from wider collaborations with international partners.

Preprimary & Primary Education

In the mid-1990s an estimated 31 percent of the age-relevant children were enrolled in preprimary educational institutions in the FRY (Serbia and Montenegro) (i.e., the gross enrollment ratio for preprimary education was 31 percent). As noted above, preprimary education in Serbia is optional. Nonetheless, nearly 165,000 children in Serbia—about 10.5 percent of all children ages 0 to 7—were enrolled in preprimary education in the 1999-2000 school year and taught by 8,134 educators. The ratio of children to educators was reported as 10 to 1 (presumably because preschoolers typically attend half day sessions).

In 1999-2000 about 350,000 pupils were enrolled in lower primary schooling (grades 1-4) and about 380,000 were enrolled in the upper primary grades (grades 5-8) at 3,616 state schools in Serbia, of which 1,443 were full primary schools covering all 8 of the basic education grades. No private primary schools existed in Serbia. With an average pupil to teacher ratio of 16.6, about 44,000 teachers provided primary level instruction in Serbia. Significant differences in class size could be found between village and urban schools with a much lower pupil to teacher ratio in the first four grades of village primary schools than in urban areas. The pupil to teacher ratio for basic education in the FRY as a whole was almost the same: 16.9 in 1997. Few curricular innovations were made in Serbia in the later 1990s at the basic education level except for slight reductions in the number of lessons taught so as to relieve some of the academic pressure on the pupils.

In 1999-2000 almost 287,000 pupils were taught at the primary level in Kosovo, approximately 262,000 of them (91.3 percent) using Albanian, Bosniac, or Turkish as the language of instruction and a little more than 25,000 (8.7 percent) taught in Serbian. Of this 91.3 percent, about 138,000 pupils (52.4 percent of the group) were male and nearly 125,000 (47.6 percent) were female. Of the same 91.3 percent, most (92.3 percent) were taught in Albanian. Late twentieth century estimates indicated that the dropout rate in Kosovo at the primary level was about 6.7 percent; of the 30,000 pupils who enroll in grade 1 each year, only 28,000 were completing their 8 years of primary education. Reportedly 919 schools provided instruction at the primary level, all of them publicly funded, with 15,788 teachers employed. The pupil to teacher ratio was slightly higher in the Albanian language stream (18:1) than in the Turkish and Bosniac streams (16:1) and significantly lower in the Serbian language stream (13:1).

Secondary Education

In 1999-2000 approximately 333,000 students were enrolled in secondary schools covering 4 grades of secondary education in Serbia (80,643 students, or about one-quarter, in general education programs and 251,916 students taking 2, 3, or 4 year vocational programs). The balance of general versus vocational secondary education in the federation as a whole differs significantly from the balance in Serbia. In 1996 about 55.7 percent of upper secondary students in FRY followed general courses of study while 44.3 percent were enrolled in vocational and technical programs. Upper secondary vocational education is directed toward training students along 543 educational profiles in 15 fields of work in Serbia. Thirty-one educational profiles involve 2 years of vocational or technical education, 133 require 3 years, and 148 require 4 years. Additionally, 231 specialist profiles can be followed after 2 years of work experience.

In the 1999-2000 academic year, secondary schools in Serbia numbered 126 general education schools and 311 vocational schools, all of them public, as well as 2 private schools offering general secondary programs. With 24,603 teachers providing secondary instruction, classes ranged from 10 students each in some villages to an average of 30 to 40 students per class in urban areas. The average student to teacher ratio at the secondary level for Serbia was 14. About 52.5 percent of secondary education students in the FRY were female in 1999-2000, but gender-related educational statistics for Serbia were not readily available; neither were reliable, secondary level, gross enrollment ratios available.

Curricular changes in Serbia in the late 1990s included the introduction of computer and informatics courses in all general education secondary schools. The need to revise history textbooks in the FRY was highlighted at the start of the new millennium by reform-minded individuals who found history instruction to be overly biased in a Serbian nationalist direction. Texts covering historical events, such as the war in Bosnia and the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, had a decidedly Serbian ethnonationalist cast to them and stood in significant need of revision so that Balkan history would be more accurately portrayed and ethnically balanced.

In 1999-2000 a reported 80,661 students attended secondary schools in Kosovo, about 61 percent in vocational programs and 39 percent in general education programs. Fifty-four public schools provided secondary education and employed 3,094 teachers. The student to teacher ratio was 19 in the Albanian, Bosniac, and Turkish language stream and 8 in the Serbian language stream. In the 1999-2000 school year, secondary students in Kosovo general education programs numbered 31,318. Of these students 92.9 percent were ethnic Albanians, 5.1 percent were Serbs, and only about 1 percent each were Bosniacs or Turks. Very few Roma students (just five individuals) participated in the general track of secondary education in Kosovo. At the secondary vocational level, 49,343 students were enrolled, of which about 10 percent took the 3 year program and the rest followed 4 year courses of study. Of the vocational students, about 90.9 percent were Albanians, 7.8 percent were Serbs, and less than 1 percent each were Bosniacs, Turks, or Roma. Here, more Roma participated: 53 students. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the dropout rate in Kosovo at the secondary level was around 34 percent with a significantly higher dropout rate for female than for male students.

Higher Education

Serbia had 58 tertiary institutions in the 1999-2000 academic year: 9 public universities (including Prishtina University, which had moved to Central Serbia from Kosovo in 1999) and 3 private universities—the 12 universities encompassing 85 faculties. The private universities offered training in commerce, management, and the arts. Serbia also had 49 non-university, post secondary schools. In 1997-1998 the gross enrollment ratio at the tertiary level for people ages 18 through 24 in Serbia was about 22.6 percent—17.8 percent in university programs and 4.8 percent in non-university higher education. For the FRY as a whole, gross tertiary enrollment ratios in the mid-1990s had been around 16.5 percent to 21 percent with somewhat higher participation rates for females than for males. In 1999-2000 a total of 211,137 students were enrolled in tertiary studies in Serbia: 156,754 students (85,153 of them enrolled full time) in university programs and 54,383 students (22,540 of them full time) in non-university programs. University level teaching staff numbered 9,561, and the student to teacher ratio was reported as 16.4. Other post secondary tertiary level teaching staff numbered 1,690 with a student to teacher ratio of 32.2. In 1997 tertiary students in the FRY specialized in various disciplines in the following proportions: 7.7 percent of students concentrated in the humanities, 20.8 percent in the social and behavioral sciences, 7.4 percent in the natural sciences, 11.1 percent in medicine, 17.9 percent in engineering, and 35.2 percent in other subject areas.

In the 1999-2000 academic year 22,058 students were enrolled in tertiary programs at the University of Prishtina, where the language of instruction was Albanian. No data were available for the Serbian language stream of tertiary studies. The University of Prishtina, consisting of 14 faculties, and 7 higher schools provided instruction at the tertiary level in Kosovo. The total number of teachers in university and post secondary positions, including university professors, lecturers, higher school professors, assistants, and collaborators, was 1,083, yielding a student to teacher ratio of 20:1.

Administration, Finance, & Educational Research

The Ministry of Education has primary administrative responsibility for Serbia's basic education system and for the secondary and tertiary levels of instruction as well. At the federal level, the Rectors' Conference of Yugoslavia seated in Belgrade also formulates and administers education policy and practices. In 1998 public expenditures on education and training in Serbia amounted to US$621 million or about 3.8 percent of the known GDP. About 40.4 percent of government expenditures covered net salaries while about 2.2 percent went to investments, 11.2 percent covered school equipment, 29.5 percent paid for social allowances, and 16.7 percent covered other education-related expenses. Of all funds spent on education, 46.5 percent were allocated for basic education, 25.3 percent for secondary education, and 28.2 percent for education at the tertiary level. The government ministry responsible for social and family care and for welfare provided the state contribution to preprimary education: one year of preschool for all six year olds (three hours per day) and preschool education for children without parents, children with emotional or behavioral problems, and children hospitalized for long periods. Municipal authorities and parents covered daycare costs for preprimary children.

Despite the international sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia beginning in 1991 in response to "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, certain international donors provided substantial educational support to Serbia by the late 1990s. This preceded the more sizable promise of international development funds at the June 2001 international donors conference for the former Yugoslavia held in Brussels. For example, UNICEF alone gave US$1.4 million in 1998, $2.4 million in 1999, and about $4.0 million in 2000 to make emergency repairs on school buildings and heating facilities and to provide books for school libraries, clothing and shoes for children, preprimary equipment and toys, and in-service teacher training in Serbia.

The Ministry of Education of the Interim Government of Kosova and the Department of Education and Science of the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) handle educational administration. The Department of Education and Science pays salaries financed mainly by international donors, based on criteria established for the "consolidated budget" for Kosovo. Some educational institutions are directly funded by agencies and nongovernmental organizations or generate their own revenue (e.g., by renting out their facilities), while others receive modest funds from the consolidated budget to cover basic operating expenses. Public spending on education in February 2000 amounted to about 28 percent of all public spending in Kosovo. Regarding the division of funds across the various education levels, about 5 percent of the public funds used for education went to preschool programming, 65 percent covered primary education, 19 percent covered secondary education, and 11 percent went to higher education. In the year 2000, major grants from international donors to finance school reconstruction amounted to US$36.6 million with the Japanese government and UNICEF together providing US$8 million, the International Development Bank and Danida (the Danish government agency for international development assistance) each providing US$6 million, and ECHO providing $7 million. Other contributors giving between US$1 million and $2.5 million in 2000 included SDC, CIDA, the British Red Cross, UNDP, and DRA in collaboration with OxFam.

Nonformal Education

In 1999-2000 about 2,200 adult learners in Serbia were enrolled in basic education programs through 18 publicly funded institutions where a total of 197 teachers provide instruction and the student to teacher ratio was 13. In the late 1990s adult vocational and technical education programs at the secondary level existed in Serbia through part time studies within regular upper secondary schools; no special upper secondary schools existed where only adults were enrolled. Additionally, some community open universities provided informal training to adults in Serbia. A significant shortage of education and training opportunities for adults in Serbia was acknowledged.

A May 2001 description of Serbian education published by the European Training Foundation observed, "Adult education and training has suffered significantly during the last few years. It is estimated that in recent years only 1 percent of the adult population received training." Although traditionally adult education schools had existed in Serbia, most of the participants were young dropouts between the ages of 15 and 18 rather than older adults seeking retraining. Workers Universities had previously offered short and long courses to adults looking for additional training or developing new skills, but in 2001 only 10 of these were still operating. Employment Offices also had customarily provided training to job seekers and employees, yet financial and size constraints in 2001 were prevented them from serving all those interested in benefiting from their training services. Courses in the state-sponsored Employment Offices generally focused on computing, project management, management skills, and job-seeking tactics. Finally, training centers established within private enterprises also existed, though little information was publicly available concerning their capacity to adequately train employees who sought instruction there. As already noted, one of the Minister of Education's priorities in 2001 was to improve the course offerings and training possibilities open to adult learners in Serbia so as to better match job skills with those needed in the economy.

Teaching Profession

Pedagogical institutes and in-service teacher training centers in Serbia were closed in 1991. For the next 10 years, the Ministry of Education provided no systematic in-service education. However, the Ministry offered one or two seminars and workshops per year to teachers as refresher courses in specific subject areas. Initial teacher preparation has been provided by a variety of institutions. Preschool teachers receive two years of post secondary training either in specialized teacher preparation schools or in university faculties. Primary teachers of the first four grades attend teacher training colleges for four years and primary teachers of grades 5-8 also complete four years of tertiary education, covering the relevant disciplines in which they will teach. Primary teachers of music and the arts receive training in post secondary art schools (for both music and the arts) that offer specialized training. Secondary level teachers receive four years of higher education in arts and science faculties with special courses in education and teaching methodology integrated with their studies plus a semester of practice teaching during the year before they graduate. Educators at the tertiary level—assistants, docents, faculty professors, regular professors, and extraordinary professors—obtain their higher education (and research training, depending on the level of education and area of expertise) in university undergraduate and post-graduate programs. Those interested in promotion to the highest positions must obtain the Doktor Nauka (Doctor of Science) degree in the appropriate fields of higher education and research. All teachers at the tertiary level must receive some form of specialized training.

New efforts in the late 1990s to increase the skills of teachers through in-service training were provided mainly by nongovernmental organizations and international agencies in Serbia, offering basic education teachers training in active learning methods, democratic and multicultural education, psychosocial rehabilitation, and children's rights. UNICEF programs run cooperatively with the Ministry of Education trained about 5,000 teachers in active teaching and learning, about 15,000 teachers in nonviolent conflict resolution skills, and about 10,000 in methods of providing psychosocial support and assistance in difficult circumstances; about 1,000 preschool teachers received training from UNICEF in more flexible, innovative, child-centered teaching methodologies.

Summary

At the start of the twenty-first century, Serbia required substantial inputs to reconstruct its damaged educational system. Many schools were damaged in the violence of the 1990s and stood in major need of repair at the turn of the millennium. Educational equipment was in considerably short supply, and teaching materials sometimes were provided by international organizations such as UNICEF rather than by the state, due to Serbia's severe economic problems and the economic embargo on the country. The most needed reforms to be made in the educational system of Serbia—other than repairing basic infrastructure in Serbia and Kosovo—centered on democratizing education, both from a procedural and a management standpoint, and making learning a more active enterprise for students and teachers alike. Kosovo was receiving substantial support in this area by the year 2000 from the international community, but assistance to Serbia was slower to follow due to the political and economic constraints on the republic and the slow pace at which Serbian and Yugoslav officials complied with the demands of the International Criminal Tribunal. Curricula also needed to be revised to more accurately depict historical events and to reflect the multicultural, multilinguistic nature of Serbia and the rest of the Balkan peninsula. In June 2001 a large conference of international donors met in Brussels to discuss an international package of financial assistance to the former Yugoslavia, including Serbia and Kosovo. Much of the US$1.2 billion in funds pledged at the conference was designated for the educational sector to cover the salaries of educational personnel and to rebuild war-damaged schools and equip them with the materials needed to restart and improve educational programming. By 2001 Serbia seemed to be marking a new political direction for itself that would lead to social and economic improvements for the people of Serbia and Kosovo, including in the field of education. The possibilities for enhancing the educational system seemed promising as the government of Serbia prepared to develop a comprehensive educational reform package and to receive the necessary financial means to implement the desired reforms, including educational changes that would stimulate the Serbian economy and promote greater cooperation across Serbia and Kosovo, the other Balkan states, and beyond.

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—Barbara Lakeberg Dridi