The announced reforms in high school education have caused positive vibrations among high school students, according to Berin Muhamed, president of the High School Students' Union. As he tells Free Press, the proposed concept from the Ministry of Education and Science offers the opportunity for students to choose their own elective subjects, which has not been the practice so far. After submitting the concept to all school representatives, this proposal attracted the most attention.

– In the last 20 years, elective subjects were generally not chosen by the foreign students, but were decided by the class teacher, the professional service, the principal or the person who created the program for that year. With the proposed new concept for high school education, students will finally have the right to choose the subjects they want to follow in the third and fourth years, and at the same time they will also have a free elective subject. And here, the fact that the student does not have a chance to have a voice in his choice, which is very important, will already be lost. This is a great change in the education system – says Muhamed.

High school students love the subject Civil Law

– The Union made a proposal to the Ministry of Education, because in recent years we have been trying to make Civic Education a mandatory subject all years, but according to the analyses we conducted in the summer with two professors, we saw that in countries where the subjects Civic Education, Media Literacy, Financial Literacy and Debate are decentralized, it has a much better effect, so the new concept envisages that these four topics will be included in all curricula of all subjects, meaning that they will be completely decentralized – said Muhamed.

The High School Students' Union has connections with all schools, including private ones, where there are student communities. They are aware of the shortcomings, as our interlocutor says, that the connection with some high schools is unattainable for them because they do not have representatives.

– We are using the opportunity and with the new concept we have also proposed a draft law on student organizing. It will either be a separate law or it may be merged with the Law on Student Organizing. In this way, every school will have to form a student community, this will not only be good for high school students, but also for the state in general, because it will give high school students space to develop critical thinking and normally be active citizens in society – he said.

The High School Students' Union currently has 146 members.