The Great Robbery of Educators: Teacher salaries lower than serbian average

„Professors’ Colony”, a tiny part of Belgrade between the Cvijićeva, Čarlija Čaplina and Zdravka Čelara streets – one of the most beautiful residential areas in the heart of the city – consists mostly of individual houses worth at least half a million euros each. It owes its name to the fact that this used to be the area where Serbia’s distinguished university professors and school teachers, as well as a few doctors, built their homes. Today, a teacher with a university degree who would want to buy a house in the Colony would have to work for 64 years. Without spending any money on food, of course, or anything else for that matter.

This data offers the best indicator of the current state of education in Serbia. The worst of all is that the trend of declining educator salaries in relation to the average salary in Serbia, and even more so to the average salary in the public sector, has been evident for years.

At the end of 2023, the average teacher salary stood at RSD 76,062, or nearly RSD 10,000 less that the national average of RSD 86.007. This difference was RSD 703 in 2019, a year later it rose to RSD 978, in 2021 it reached RSD 3,814, in 2022 it was RSD 8,539, and last year it rocketed to RSD 9,945. The dismal trend for those who teach and educate our children is very obvious and clearly shows that education has been pushed aside. Knowing this, it is no wonder that the number of first-year students who enroll in teaching majors at the Faculty of Mathematics and the Faculty of Physics can barely be counted on the fingers of two hands, and as a direct result of this, in a few years there won’t be enough teachers to teach these subjects to our children. And we already know what comes next. When there’s not enough bus drivers, nurses, or sanitation workers, there are people from India and Nepal, the fourth and fifth-ranked country by the number of work permit recipients in Serbia. The same will happen in education.

Teachers’ trade unions and deans of the faculties that educate teachers presented their Platform for the salvation of education last year, stating that the educators’ salaries need to be higher than the average by 30 to 35 percent in order to secure teaching staff for the years to come. Along with restoring the dignity and reputation of educators in the society. Serbia is miles away from where it needs to be.

NIN / Zoran Ilić

The ratio of basic salary of a teacher with the 7th degree of vocational education and the average salary paid in Serbia currently stands at 0.9. In Croatia, the current ratio is 1.1, in the Federation of BiH 1.22, and in the Republic of Srpska 1.26. So, the teachers in Serbia can only dream about what the teachers in Srpska have. A similar ratio is used to calculate the amount of pension, so the teachers who are retiring now have a lower pension base than their colleagues who retired before them. What is particularly worrying for the teachers is the fact that, as the minimum salary in Serbia is increasing, their incomes are moving further away from the average and approaching the minimum. Admittedly, after many years, this negative trend was stopped in 2023, but that was it – the material position of teachers has not improved.

After the teachers’ protest last year, the Government of Serbia pledged to increase their salaries and raise them to the level of average pay by January 1st 2025. Considering that we are now only ten months away from that date and that the difference to be made up is nearly RSD 10,000, there is simply no obvious way for the Government to fulfill its promise. At the meeting of the Social and Economic Council, representatives of the teachers’ trade unions presented this data to Prime Minister Ana Brnabić and her team, after which the government officials concluded that “the position of education employees in Serbia is unacceptable”. Teachers have been well aware of this for years.

There was also talk much about the establishment of salary grades, which is being postponed year after year, and which would finally bring order to salaries across the public sector. The base salary would be multiplied by salary coefficients predefined for various professions, so the employees with the same level of education would receive the same salary, the only difference coming from the different coefficient. As a result, teacher salaries would be brought on a par with those paid in health care, military, police, local administrations...

Salary grades were first announced in 2014 by the then Minister of State Administration and Local Self-Government Kori Udovički. Her successor at the Ministry Branko Ružić spoke about them as imminent in 2017, stating that they would be introduced in 2019. In 2019 he said that the introduction was postponed for the next year. That was the year 2020 when the Covid pandemic broke out, so there was no time for salary grades, but the new Minister Marija Obradović said that the salary grades were “the main task of her Ministry”. Nothing has happened since then... 

Dobrivoje Marjanović, head of the Federation of Serbian Educational Workers Unions (USPRS), told NIN that the Federation had been warning about the looming collapse of the educational system for the past two and a half decades. 

“Sitting in our classrooms, we were clearly able to see that this scenario was coming. Education has long been pushed aside. And we have always criticized the sector-wide salary increases. When government representatives announce a five, seven, or ten percent public sector salary increase, it is good for some, but for us, education workers, it means that we will be falling behind even more. Because, if you increase all salaries by ten percent, both the ones that are RSD 100.000 and the ones that are RSD 80,000, the difference between them becomes even greater. We insisted on the use of salary grades, but nothing has come of it so far,” says Marjanović. 

He also points out that the problem is that, for the government, education has never been a priority, unlike everyone else in the public sector.   

“After the salary increases between 2009 and 2015, the salaries of health care workers came to be higher than ours by 30-40 percent, so when we started the negotiations on salary grades we simply were not in the same group. Then in 2017, when the agreement on salary grades was achieved, the Government issued a document based on which education employees would receive a 35 percent salary increase over the next two years in relation to the remainder of the public sector. And then it was removed from the agenda, as the authorities realized that it would cause dissatisfaction across other public services. For that reason, we agreed last year that we would not ask for any percentage increase any more, but, as a start, insist that our salaries be raised to the state average,” Marjanović explains.

He points out that, according to projections, the state average will reach approximately RSD 110,000 early next year.

NIN / Milan Ilić

“The average salary in education is now a little over RSD 86,000. Last October, we signed a protocol with the Government, according to which the base salary in education should be equal to the average salary in Serbia at the beginning of 2025. We’ll see what happens”, Marjanović says, adding that, had the salary grades been introduced as agreed in 2017, the teachers would already be paid around RSD 110,000 a month. 

He gave us an illustrative example of the problem in education – the monthly salary of a nurse with the 4th degree of vocational education is about the same as the salary of a school teacher, who has to earn a master’s degree and not just complete graduate studies.

His colleague Slavko Derenj, vice-president of the “Nezavisnost” Teachers’ Trade Union, says that they presented their request for salary increase to Prime Minister Ana Brnabić in the last meeting of the Social and Economic Council.

“The conclusion was that the material position of education employees must be improved urgently. The sector was near to collapse. We were given a 5.5 percent increase at the beginning of September, but that was not enough to reverse the decline in relation to the average salary paid in Serbia. According to the protocol we signed with the Government in October, we should reach that average by the beginning of 2025. Salaries have been the problem for decades. The last time when we were more or less satisfied with the salary we received, in relation to other public sector employees, was in 2007, 2008,” Derenj says.

He emphasizes that the education employees’ salaries moving away from the average and towards the minimal salary paid in Serbia is a huge problem. 

“Every year we are moving away from the average salary and closer to the minimum. Minister of Education Slavica Đukić Dejanović, when we spoke to her, did not understand it at first. She thought that we were asking for the average public sector salary, but we were in fact asking for the average salary paid in Serbia. It is a big difference. The people in the Government know that there is a big problem, even the President (Vučić) talked about it, they are aware of it, so we’ll see what they will do about it”, Derenj explains. 

Federation vice-president Zvonimir Jović says that in 2015 an agreement was signed with the Government about the introduction of salary grades by the end of that year. 

“That was near the end of the strike, the biggest strike in the history of Serbia. Soon it will be ten years since then, but the salary grades have not been introduced yet. There is no willingness to resolve this issue. We sent our delegation to Slovenia, where they have solved this problem well. In Slovenia, salaries in the public sector are clearly specified; a cleaning lady with the first degree of vocational education is paid this much, the president is paid that much, and it doesn’t matter where you work in the public sector, only your degree of education matters,” Jović says.

Marjanović adds: 

“Back in 2015, when we reached the agreement on salary grades, Minister Srđan Verbić signed it, and Kori Udovički, (then) Prime Minister Vučić were also present... Those same people are running the state today. Siniša Mali was the Minister of Finance... Now the main topic in the public is the grading of students, those are peripheral things...”

NIN / NIN

He points out that the teachers’ trade unions, university deans and the Association of School Principals of Serbia have signed a joint platform, which states that the teacher’s salary must be 30-35 percent higher than the national average. 

“But I repeat, at this point we are only asking for the average salary. We won’t even talk about public companies, EPS for example, where the salary of an auxiliary worker is close to the salary of our employees with a master’s degree. This is degrading and now we see the result – the teaching majors at our universities attract only a few candidates. And we already have a shortage of not only Math and Physics, but of all teachers. In the school where I work, we weren’t able to find a music teacher that we could hire. It pays more to work in kindergartens, and they are pedagogues by profession, so they are qualified for that. Even students don’t want to work for the amounts that we receive,” says Dobrivoje Marjanović. 

Slavko Derenj says that the Working Group, which was established in October last year with the task to monitor the implementation of the agreement that was then reached, said that the salary grades would be introduced on January 1st 2025.

“We don’t believe that, they are telling us the same things ever since Kori Udovički was the minister. They are not able to do that; they are not financially prepared. And even when they are talking about salary grades, certain sectors are left out – the judiciary, the military, state bodies... Salary grades are only intended to apply to the underprivileged budget beneficiaries. Still, it would be a huge step up for us. You know, education is not a government’s favorite. The problem is that they focus on the total cost of education, and we only come second, they don’t care about how many people work in this sector,” Derenj explains.

He also underlines that people are leaving their jobs in education en masse. 

“Our colleagues, mathematicians who completed the teaching major at the university, can, for example, do very well in programming. One of our colleagues now works in a betting shop, calculating odds, because the salary there is several times higher. We don’t know how to replace those people, not everyone can work with children – it takes a certain sensibility, especially in high schools. Even universities face the shortage of teaching staff, let alone schools,” says Derenj.