“Our future depends on quality education in the present.”
Many people, from Dositej Obradović to Arnold Schwarzenegger, have understood this, while politicians in Serbia tend to remember education particularly during election campaigns, boasting about figures and their own achievements or those of their predecessors.
Teachers’ and university lecturers’ salaries, as well as investment in education itself, have also become a topic in the run-up to the snap parliamentary election on 25 October.
We examined whether and by how much their salaries have actually increased over the past 14 years, including the claim by Ana Brnabić, a senior official of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and third on its electoral list, that salaries have risen by 147 per cent and investment in education by 204 per cent over the same period, using data as well as the experiences of teachers and university lecturers.
In recent months, it has been claimed that the starting salary for teachers in schools has reached the national average of 120,000 dinars, but many education workers point out that they still have to take on additional work to make ends meet.
We also analysed how their salaries compare with the cost of a consumer basket, concluding that they only came close to matching it in 2025.
“We are below the national average and, despite all the government’s attacks, particularly those coming from the Ministry of Education, we are in a subordinate position, while our job is to teach children that they need to think.
“When you increase that salary, part of it immediately goes towards loans and bills, and practically 10 days before the end of the month you have nothing left – it is mere survival,” says Ana Veljković, a secondary-school geography teacher in Niš.
How much are the salaries, and how are they calculated?
To calculate salaries in education, we have to do some maths.
The basic salary rate for public services – since January 2026, this has been 5,838.53 dinars – is multiplied by the coefficient for the relevant post, the level of which depends on educational qualifications and position.
Under amendments to the Public Services Salaries Act, the coefficient for teachers with a master’s degree is 19.10, while for those with an undergraduate degree it is 16.40.
The starting salary for a teacher in primary or secondary education, with no years of service, is around 114,000 dinars, which is almost equal to the average salary in Serbia, said Dejan Vuk Stanković, the Minister of Education.
More experienced teachers who are also form tutors can earn more than 135,000 dinars, according to the minister’s calculation.
“The starting salary for a teacher is 8,913 dinars below the national average, or around 7.4 per cent below it.
“Minister, that is not called ‘almost equal’. It is called – less,” the Union of Education Workers’ Trade Unions of Serbia said on 1 September 2026.
The average net salary in Serbia in July was 121,346 dinars, according to data from the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia.
Fourteen years ago, a teacher’s salary was around €390, while today it is around €950, says Dušan Bojanić, who teaches geography in several primary schools near Zrenjanin. “The salary has indeed increased and it sounds good, but everything else has become more expensive too, and you cannot cover all your needs. When you divide 111,000, which is roughly the starting salary for a teacher teaching 80 lessons a month, it means that on average they earn 600–700 dinars per lesson, which is less than the daily wage of an apple picker,” Bojanić told BBC Serbian.
This teacher, who has several decades of experience, has to work in several schools to have a full teaching load, as do many of his colleagues.
Brnabić’s first claim: Higher university salaries
It depends who you ask.
University lecturers’ salaries stood at 77,000 dinars in 2012 and 190,080 dinars last year, meaning they had increased by 147 per cent, Ana Brnabić, third on the SNS’s ‘United Serbia’ electoral list, claimed on N1 television.
University employees confirm that salaries have increased, but the cost of living has also risen over the past 14 years.
Taking advantage of a pre-election television debate, Brnabić presented charts intended to support the claim that university salaries had risen by almost 150 per cent since 2012, when the SNS came to power in Serbia.
Salaries depend on the position, and it makes a difference whether you are an associate professor or a full professor, or whether you are a single parent and receive a small additional allowance, points out Miloš Jovanović, an assistant professor of sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš.
“Salary has certainly increased and has kept pace with annual inflation, but that it has gone up by 147 per cent – that is difficult to believe. If my salary had increased that much, I would have noticed. It has risen, and inflation has not completely swallowed the increase, but it is not as if we are living in luxury now,” he told BBC Serbian.
Part of the salary is paid by the Ministry of Education, while the faculty pays the remainder from its own funds, generated through tuition fees and various projects, he adds.
The SPIRI system (System for Budget Preparation, Execution, Accounting and Reporting) was also introduced in 2026, which in practice means that each faculty has a single account into which money from the state budget is paid, along with all other additional funds belonging to the institution.
“This means that, in fact, we receive everything from the budget, but the ministry has to enter the faculty’s funds into the system and approve them for payment. In Niš, we have a problem because our faculty funds have not been approved, so we have not received our salaries since July,” Jovanović adds.
There are also differences in salaries between faculties, while the inflow of money is affected by whether a professor or teaching assistant is involved in a project.
Salaries at the Faculty of Law or the Faculty of Economics in Niš sometimes reached 200,000 dinars, while at the Faculty of Philosophy they were between 70,000 and 90,000, Jovanović says.
At faculties with large numbers of students and additional activities, such as the Faculty of Medicine, where professors also work in clinics alongside teaching, salaries are certainly higher, he says.
The same applies to technical faculties, where patents are developed and staff go into the field.
“There is more money there, but for everyone to have 190,000 dinars is impossible,” he adds.
The figures available to Goran Rogljić, dean of the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Belgrade, show that the net salary of a full professor at that faculty is 136,000 dinars after income tax has been deducted.
“Associate professors earn 122,000 dinars, while an assistant professor earns around 12,000 less. An assistant’s salary is 98,000, while a teaching associate earns 8,000 less,” he said.
Salaries are similar at other natural sciences faculties, with differences of 10 to 15 per cent, he added.
From blockades to cuts and fulfilment of demands
After the canopy at Novi Sad railway station collapsed, killing 16 people and seriously injuring one woman, students blockaded faculties and launched anti-corruption protests.
In addition to demanding that criminal responsibility for the tragedy be established, students also called for a 20 per cent increase in the higher-education budget, worth around 12 billion dinars.
The authorities initially rejected the demands, but subsequently fulfilled all of them and said: “Now it is time for the faculties to start working.”
Some professors also faced salary cuts because of their support for the students, namely the faculty blockades and the suspension of teaching and examination periods.
Due to a lack of money, some faculties were unable even to pay their utility bills.
Following an agreement between the government and representatives of higher-education institutions in December 2025, the Ministry of Education paid almost 583 million dinars to cover material costs and other employee benefits under the special collective agreement.
All faculties where teaching had resumed were paid outstanding salaries totalling 577 million dinars.
As president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić announced in his first address after the election was called that public-sector salaries would increase by eight per cent from December.
“If this increase were to materialise now, we might perhaps reach that average, but it will only take effect in January 2027, and by then the average salary will also have increased. There is money available – more precisely, there is money in the media, but not at official negotiations, while we can see that there is money for other purposes,” says Dobrivoje Marjanović of the Union of Education Workers’ Trade Unions (USPR) to BBC Serbian.
Brnabić’s second claim: Investment in education
“Education is extremely important to us, and from 2012 to the present, investment in this area has increased by 204 per cent,” Ana Brnabić claimed on 24 September 2026.
Investment in this area should be prioritised over less productive public investments, such as football stadiums or arms purchases, the Fiscal Council said in 2024.
That year, the Ministry of Education received its largest budget increase in several years.
Its budget rose from 249.34 billion dinars in 2023 to 314.19 billion dinars.
Between January 2023 and January 2024, the total increase in education workers’ salaries amounted to more than 30 per cent. The 2026 education budget was increased by 13 per cent compared with the budget available in the previous, chaotic year.
The Ministry of Education now has 425 billion dinars (€3.62 billion) at its disposal, compared with 374 billion dinars in 2025.
That amount would be enough to modernise 265 secondary schools in Serbia, as the Union of Secondary School Students of Serbia estimates that 1.6 billion dinars is allocated for this purpose per institution.
That is around half of all secondary schools in the country.
In neighbouring Montenegro, the budget of this ministry is around €333.9 million.
“When total spending on education is taken into account, it is the lowest in Europe; only Albania is worse,” Milojko Arsić, a professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Belgrade, claimed previously.
(BBC Serbia, 01.10.2026)