To mark the beginning of a new school year, all primary and secondary schools in Serbia receive a regular informative letter from the Minister of Education, Science and Technological Development. The letter is addressed to the schools’ principals, and amongst other information relevant for the successful start of the school year, it contained useful resources that are available online which can be used by schools in their daily curricular and extracurricular activities. This September was no exception - however, in this year’s annual letter, the Ministry also highlighted the Council of Europe standards and, apart from stressing the importance of competences for democratic culture in the formal education system, recommended a number of publications, developed under joint EU/CoE action Quality Education for All as well.
When talking about cooperation between schools and parents, the Minister recommended two unique publications created for parents who want to raise their children to become active citizens: Growing up in a democratic family: a manual for parents with sections on ages 6 – 10 and 11 – 14 and Living in a democratic family: a manual for parents of adolescents age 15 to 19.
For improving the quality of education through supporting democratic culture in the school environment, specific resources were stressed: How to achieve a democratic culture in schools - examples of best practice, Teaching competences for democratic culture online, and Democratic culture in the digital environment – a handbook for schools.
The latest policy handbook, Guidelines for integration of RFCDC in selected subjects of national curricula, was also included in the list of resources to be used by teachers. Being a unique publication created for education professionals, the Guidelines are aimed at the entire education system providing practical solutions for integration of competences in democratic culture selected subjects of national curricula.
The Minister also pointed out that all of these publications are available on the Ministry's website and called on the school principals to download and use them in school activities.
The action Quality education for all is implemented under the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Türkiye 2019-2022“.
