Representations   Serbia

Name

Unija srednjoškolaca Srbije - UNSS
Union of secondary school students of Serbia

Type of Members

Student councils and individual students.

Amount of members

Number of students present in schools where there is a student council represented in UNSS is over 10 000.

General Assembly

Around 30

Budget

€ 10,000

Organisation's Staff

None

Year of Foundation

2003

Basic Structure

Basic structure

UNSS bases on individual membership and those members can become members of the Board. There are 5 Board members and they are in charge of running the organization (writing and coordinating projects, finding funds, organizing events etc.)
Secretary General is a person who represents the organization and deals with the administration. Secretary General is a member of the Board, and is equal with the rest of the members of the Board in the hierarchy of the organization.
Board members are elected at the General Assembly.
General Assembly decides upon the Statues, Political platform, work program etc.

Other Student Unions

UNSS is the only organization representing secondary school students in Serbia.

(SUS is University students’ union of Serbia, the national organisation representing University students, a member of ESU. )

Student Representations

In the law it is stated only that it is a recommendation for secondary schools to have a student council. This doesn’t oblige schools to have a student council meaning that the principle is authorized not to allow students to form a student council. If there is an existing student council still it doesn’t have any rights.
There is only one student representative in the School Board, but without the right to vote.

Students at School Level

The involvement of school students in the development of their educational centers is very much up to every school to define. While some schools have important structures for students’ participation, others do not even have an active student council. This creates very important disparities among different schools, cities and regions.

Students in Municipal or Governmental Bodies

Students are not in any way represented in neither municipal nor governmental bodies.

Success

Students are practically not heard at all. The only possibility for them to make some small changes is at school level, but this also varies from school to school.

UNSS is representing the voice of students at national level and is making some progress by doing different projects in schools, communicating with Ministry and through media.

At the moment UNSS is cooperating with the Ministry of youth and therefore school students are given the opportunity to have a say concerning National Youth Strategy.

Hurdles

There is no public funding for school student organization like UNSS. The Government doesn’t provide any money for the office or administrative costs necessary for the organization’s functioning.
Another very big problem is that Ministry of education is unaware of the importance of student representation and so far there has been no interest for cooperation with UNSS from their part.
Ministry of youth and other donors are the only ones that help student representation by financing projects of UNSS.

Issues

UNSS is a member of Youth peer network and All Different All Equal network in Serbia.

Project
School Systems
Representations
Tools
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