page_title: Joint Council of Municipalities
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Joint Council of Municipalities / Education
caption_attribution_description: Hrvatski: Srednja škola u Dalju
context_page_description: The Joint Council of Municipalities in Croatia is an elected consultative sui generis body which constitutes a form of cultural self-government of Serbs in the eastern Croatian borderland Danube region. The body was established in the initial aftermath of the Croatian War of Independence as a part of the international community' efforts to peacefully settle the conflict in self-proclaimed Eastern Slavonia, Baranya and Western Syrmia. Establishment of the ZVO was one of explicit provisions of the Erdut Agreement which called upon the United Nations to establish its UNTAES transitional mission.
  The Joint Council of Municipalities is not an autonomous administrative unit but a form of cultural autonomy in conformity with relevant Croatian law including provisions on local government cooperation. The body and some of its partners are actively pushing for formal legal recognition of ZVO legal personality within the Constructional Act on the Rights of National Minorities with limited success. The aim of the proposed change is to transform its current standing of a free association into more transparently institutionalized one.
context_section_description: Eastern Slavonia, as the area of daily activity of the Joint Council of Municipalities, is characterized by the existence of the regular elementary and secondary school education in minority languages including in Serbian. This type of education is classified in Croatian legal system as the Model A of minority education. Education is conducted either in Croatian or in minority language (Serbian, Hungarian etc) in accordance with the national curriculum. Education in minority languages involve the so called national curriculum in which students learn their language for the same number of hours per week as Croatian, while in social science and humanistic subjects such as history, geography, arts and music their national curriculum accounts for one third of the entire studied curriculum, Croatian national content accounts for the second third while European or wider international content covers the last third of the curriculum.
  Secondary schools in predominantly Serb settlements are located in Dalj (High School Dalj) and Borovo (part of Vukovar high school). High schools in Vukovar and Beli Manastir provide regular education in Serbian language as well. Elementary schools in Serb majority municipalities, some other Serb minority settlements and in towns of Vukovar and Beli Manastir provide regular elementary education in Serbian language. The Joint Council of Municipalities actively lobby for transfer of the "founding rights" of regional elementary schools from Vukovar-Srijem and Osijek-Baranja counties to its member municipalities. The Council wants to register those schools in which at the moment education is already provided exclusively in Serbian as public Serbian minority schools, therefore enabling them to officially offer exclusively Model A minority education. This idea is opposed by the Vukovar-Srijem County which insist that Croatian language education should be the primary choice in all schools, while minority language education should be second regular alternative option available only to members of certain minority group. Joint Council of Municipalities at the same time insist that education in Serbian language should be available to all students and not only to ethnic Serbs. As of 2011 95% of students in Serbian language classes in Vukovar were ethnic Serbs, while 86% of students in Croatian language classes were ethnic Croats.
  In some of those schools minority right to establish separate classes led to effective separation of pupils on national basis which led to some criticism of the practice which critics described as segregation. As this separation is not the result of the majority community exclusion of the minority but of conscious and intentional decision and preference of minority communities this form of separation is not conventionally perceived as segregation in international legal instruments such as the Convention against Discrimination in Education. No institutions of higher education operate in any of majority Serb settlements. The majority of Serb students from the region attend University of Novi Sad, University of Osijek, University of Belgrade, University of Zagreb and University of Banja Luka. Local Polytechnic Lavoslav Ružička Vukovar does not provide education in Serbian language despite being active in the region of Eastern Slavonia.
  The Cultural and Scientific Center "Milutin Milanković" is located in Dalj. Committee for Education, Culture and Sport of Joint Council of Municipalities conducts activities aimed at fostering the Serbian language and Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, through preservation of memories of important individuals and events from the past of Serbian state and ethnic group.
caption: High School Dalj
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