What the procedure is
At a public school, a director is chosen through a competition and appointed by the minister for four years. The school's governing body — the school board — publishes the vacancy. It forms a commission with an odd number of members to check documents and legal eligibility, interview candidates, and obtain the teaching or educational council's opinion by secret vote. The board then sends the minister a reasoned list of eligible candidates and its proposal. For a school in Vojvodina, the minister needs the prior consent of the competent provincial authority; if it does not reply within 15 days, consent is deemed given.
Who can apply
The law ties the directorship to the general conditions for employment in an educational institution and additional professional requirements. The general conditions include appropriate education, Serbian citizenship, command of the required language, no specified criminal convictions, and no discriminatory conduct established under the procedure set by law. A director also needs qualifications to work in a school, a teacher, educator or associate licence, training, and usually at least eight years of education-sector work after obtaining the required education. The law allows an appointed director to pass the director examination within two years of taking office.
Why vacancy notices can become disputed
A notice must allow the commission to check the legal conditions and required documents, but an objection alone does not annul a competition. Article 139 of the Law on the Foundations of the Education System includes the absence of legally established discriminatory conduct among the employment conditions; for several of those conditions, the law places evidence in the application. A dispute over one document therefore requires comparing the notice, the full application requirements and the commission's actions, rather than relying only on a public account of the notice.
Status of the Jovan Jovanović Zmaj Gymnasium competition
On 6 August, 021 reported that the gymnasium's director vacancy had appeared in the National Employment Service's Poslovi bulletin. The parents quoted by the outlet said the document list lacked proof that no discriminatory conduct had been established against a candidate and predicted that the competition would be annulled. That is their legal position, not an authority's decision. On 8 August, Danas reported that the recruitment process remained open; neither of the two news reports used here says that a director was appointed or that the competition was officially annulled.
Why it matters for a school
The procedure determines who will be responsible for the school's lawful operation, teaching organisation and staff for the next four years. It also leaves a checkable accountability trail: the commission records the competition, the school board submits the documents to the minister, and a participant may seek judicial protection through an administrative dispute. If the minister finds that the competition was not conducted lawfully, or that selecting any listed candidate could jeopardise the school's proper operation, the minister must order a new competition within eight days.
What remains open
The next material confirmation will be the published list of required documents and the commission's finding on which applicants meet the conditions. That will show whether the school board sends a proposal to the minister, the minister calls for a new competition, or an administrative dispute follows. Until such a decision, a possible annulment is not an established fact.