Leadership in education: the case of Serbia

Abstract

The paper deals with major aspects of educational leadership in Serbia. First, the legislative framework is presented which, in the last several years, has considerably focused on the roles and obligations of principals, as well as their formal training and licensing. Then, the findings of the research on principals’ needs, problems and perspectives on leadership since 2000 are described. This section shows that principals are aware of the multitude of competencies that they need to have in order to professionally fulfill their duties, but that they also believe that many problems hamper them in their jobs: insufficient school funding, teacher employment policies, inconsistent legislation, poor selection procedures of principals, inadequate support from higher administrative levels and so on. Subsequently, the paper gives an overview of seminars, trainings and academic programs that comprise the current offering of professional development opportunities for principals. Among them, the master program developed within the Tempus project and the official state program developed by the Institute for the Improvement of Education are described in more detail. Finally, the authors present a set of recommendations for the improvement of educational leadership in Serbia.