By: Ognjen Gogić
Over the past several years, Kosovo Serbs have, by force of circumstance, grown accustomed to seeing the reality in which they live change to their detriment. The rules governing their everyday lives and the institutions they rely on have become almost temporary in nature. From the abolition of dinar-based payment transactions to the closure of post offices and other Serbian institutions, a series of measures has been implemented abruptly, without giving the Serbian community any meaningful opportunity to influence them. Such institutional shocks have created a kind of conditioned reflex among Kosovo Serbs, prompting them to constantly ask what will come next and what they will next be forced to adapt to. Yet everyone’s willingness—including theirs—to endure new shocks and adjust to them has its limits. For Kosovo Serbs, one of those limits concerns education.
Education, an area to which the Serbian community in Kosovo is particularly sensitive, has not been spared the familiar political rhetoric surrounding “institutional dualism.” Considerable concern within the Serbian community was triggered by statements from Kosovo officials about the possible incorporation of Serbian educational, as well as healthcare, institutions into a single Kosovo system. In September 2025, Albin Kurti stated that “the dualism of the healthcare and education systems is not sustainable” and announced efforts to integrate them into “one and only one system.” The issue gained additional weight from messages coming from Brussels. In March 2026, EU Special Representative for the Dialogue Peter Sørensen stated that the European Union had “taken note of the Kosovo Government’s plans to integrate Serbia-supported health and education institutions into the Kosovo framework,” adding that this should be done “fully in accordance with the previous agreements reached in the Dialogue.”
Such statements raise a practical question: what do the agreements reached in the Belgrade–Pristina Dialogue and Kosovo’s legal framework provide for when it comes to education for the Serbian community in Kosovo?
The Dialogue agreements provide only a partial answer to this question. Among other things, the 2013 Brussels Agreement provides for the establishment of the Association/Community of Serb-Majority Municipalities. The Agreement identifies education as one of the areas in which member municipalities would, through the Association/Community, collectively cooperate in exercising their powers. The 2015 General Principles elaborate in greater detail on the organisation of the Association/Community and once again list education as one of its areas of activity.
This largely exhausts the provisions of the agreements that directly concern education. The agreements do not define the status of the existing Serbian educational institutions, nor do they specify what, in institutional terms, it would mean for education to be listed as one of the areas of activity of the Association/Community.
The agreements reached to date therefore do not provide a comprehensive model for regulating the Serbian education system in Kosovo. The difference becomes particularly apparent when education is compared with other areas in which specific arrangements were reached, such as policing and the judiciary. In those areas, the Brussels Agreement explicitly determined their future institutional framework. Subsequent agreements and implementation arrangements further elaborated how those solutions would be put into practice. No comparable comprehensive sectoral agreement exists for education.
If the Dialogue agreements do not provide a complete answer regarding the status of Serbian educational institutions, the next question is what Kosovo’s legal framework says on the matter.
At first glance, Kosovo legislation provides broad possibilities for organising education in the Serbian language. Since Serbian is an official language throughout Kosovo, the right to education in Serbian is not limited solely to Serb-majority municipalities, nor does it fall within the enhanced competencies granted to them. The Law on the Use of Languages and the Law on Education in the Municipalities therefore require all municipalities to create conditions for the provision of educational services in Serbian wherever there is a need for them.
The legal framework also allows for the use of curricula, teaching programmes and textbooks from Serbia, provides for the possibility of financial support from Serbia, and defines a specific legal status for the public Serbian-language university in North Mitrovica.
Kosovo regulations therefore recognise the right to education in the Serbian language and regulate in detail how such education is to be organised within the Kosovo system. The problem arises when one asks how that framework relates to the education system that already exists.
Serbian educational institutions in Kosovo are not a collection of isolated schools. They form a territorially dispersed and functionally interconnected education system operating within Serbia’s education system. It encompasses preschool, primary, secondary and higher education, including both academic and vocational studies. The institutions are located in the four municipalities in the north, in Serb-majority municipalities south of the Ibar River, but also in Serbian communities located within municipalities where Serbs do not constitute the majority.
These institutions are functionally interconnected. They operate according to common curricula, apply the same rules on assessment and examinations, maintain records and issue educational certificates and diplomas belonging to the same system. There is horizontal mobility between institutions at the same level of education, as well as vertical continuity from preschool through higher education. A student who begins their education in one institution can continue at the corresponding level in another institution within the same system. In higher education, there is also well-developed international cooperation.
For these reasons, the existing Serbian educational institutions cannot be considered individually. They form a functionally integrated system and must be treated as such in any consideration of a possible change to their status.
It is precisely at this point that the limitations of Kosovo’s existing legal framework become apparent. It regulates how educational institutions are established, registered, licensed and accredited, and under what conditions they may begin operating within the Kosovo system. Serbian educational institutions in Kosovo, however, already exist. Serbian-language education is not something that has yet to be established in Kosovo.
The educational process is already underway in Serbian schools and faculties in Kosovo. Pupils and students are at different stages of their education; they have already completed grades and passed examinations; institutions maintain records and issue educational documents; employees have established employment relationships; and the system has developed its own mechanisms of governance and financing.
The current Kosovo legal framework does not provide a complete answer to the questions arising from these facts. Establishing or licensing an institution is not the same as legally recognising an institution that is already operating within another system, and still less does it amount to changing the status of an entire functionally interconnected education system. The formal possibility for an institution to operate within the Kosovo system in the future does not, in itself, ensure continuity of the education that has already begun there.
The existing Kosovo regulations governing Serbian-language education were not designed to facilitate the transition of an already existing and functioning education system from one legal and institutional framework to another. If the ordinary rules on registration, licensing and accreditation were applied without a special transitional mechanism, there would be a risk of disruption, or even interruption, in the provision of educational services in Serbian communities in Kosovo. Questions would remain unresolved concerning the continuation of pupils’ and students’ education, the validity of grades already completed and examinations already passed, educational records and certificates, as well as the continuity of employees’ existing employment relationships.
These issues lie at the heart of the Serbian community’s concerns. The issue is not merely the administrative question of which system the community will ultimately be required to adapt to, but the possibility that a change in the status of educational institutions could disrupt education that is already in progress. Such a development could lead many parents to seek another place for their children to continue their education—and perhaps another place for the entire family to live.
In order to avoid undesirable and irreversible consequences for the position of the Serbian community, any future consideration of the status of Serbian educational institutions must make the preservation of educational continuity an imperative. This entails protecting the acquired rights of pupils and students, ensuring the continuation of education already begun, maintaining the validity of records and educational documents, preserving employees’ existing employment relationships, and safeguarding the functional and international links on which the existing system is based.
Until a legal and institutional mechanism exists that can guarantee such continuity, changing the status of the existing institutions would carry the risk of creating new problems with immediate consequences for pupils, students, employees and the Serbian community as a whole. In a community that has already been forced in recent years to adapt to a series of systemic shocks, education may prove to be the issue on which the community’s resilience finally reaches its limit. Preserving continuity must therefore be the starting point of any discussion about whether, and how, the status of the existing Serbian education system in Kosovo should be changed at all.
This op-ed is part of the research initiative “Difficult Questions Ahead: The Education System of Kosovo Serbs”, implemented by NGO CASA. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of NGO CASA or the donor supporting the research.
