The project “Building and strengthening family-school partnership” is realized by the Center for Ethics, Law and Applied Philosophy together with the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Implementation of the project is financially supported by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade.

The project runs until the end of 2015 and aims to raise the level of gender inclusiveness in primary education in Serbia. This includes the realization of the accredited seminar “All Our Identities” for class teachers and subject teachers in elementary school, as well as teachers of elective and facultative subjects and associates. The project also includes seminar of the same title for parents. The seminars are organized in cooperation with three Centers for the Professional Development of the Employees in Education (in Nis, Kikinda and Cacak) with whom a Protocol on Cooperation is signed. Besides these three cities, the seminars are also implemented in primary schools in Belgrade and organization of these seminars is carried out in direct cooperation with the management and professional services in the school.

The two-day seminar for employees in primary schools is based on the results of the research on families in Serbia that CELAP conducted during 2012/13. It is practically oriented and aims at strengthening the general pedagogical competencies of teachers necessary for the direct work with pupils on the implementation of a gender perspective in primary education. The seminar is accredited by the Institute for Advancement of Education of the Republic of Serbia for the current 2015/16 school year.

While presenting their own observations and attitudes toward the subject of the seminar, the school staff stressed the importance of informing parents about the topic as well, with the aim of modernizing educational process and strengthening cooperation of family and school in this topic area.  The outcome was creation of a seminar that is now realized with parents also. So far, our training was successfully attended by more than 180 employees in primary schools and about 50 parents.  They have sent us the news about the application of the content of our seminar in their work in schools, but also in everyday life.

Our intention is to offer recommendations to all the relevant actors in the educational system in Serbia, after the realization of all the planned seminars in order to improve their further work in this topic area. The recommendations will be based on the previous experience in realizing similar activities that CELAP has been successfully implementing since 2010. The publication with recommendations will be presented at the Round Table Discussion in Belgrade in early December 2015.