Serbia 2024

Key takeaways

In Serbia, vocational education continues to be the most common pathway for young learners, with around three-quarters of fifteen-year-olds attending vocational secondary schools. However, this high participation does not necessarily reflect a preference for vocational education—it is largely shaped by limited access to general education options. Adult learning, particularly for women and older adults, faces more significant barriers. Still, access to learning opportunities for adults has slightly improved in 2024, supported by active labour market policies that provide additional entry points for upskilling and reskilling.

Once enrolled, learners generally find supportive conditions for progression, completion, and transition across levels and between vocational and general education tracks. The system offers a degree of flexibility that allows students to tailor their learning paths, and monitoring data suggests that these pathways are accessible regardless of gender, socio-economic status, or background. However, performance in this area has weakened slightly in 2024, as fewer students continued their education after graduation. This highlights the need to maintain learning standards while enabling progression.

The quality and relevance of skills gained through VET in Serbia continue to vary across learner groups. Young learners perform slightly below the average of Torino Process countries, and their outcomes remain behind those of adult learners, especially in three-year vocational programmes. While national authorities point to strong links between learning and work—anchored in work-based learning and career guidance—labour market outcomes have yet to reflect these strengths fully. Employers still report gaps in job-specific skills and experience, and disadvantaged youth and migrants often face barriers to accessing high-quality education.

Serbia stands out for its internationally comparable data, active stakeholder involvement in VET governance, and professional leadership across schools. However, material and digital resource shortages persist, limiting the impact of investments in staffing and training. Ensuring more inclusive access to quality learning and bridging the gap between training and employment remain key areas for improvement.

Access to learning

Monitoring in the area of access to and participation to learning helps countries assess the extent to which initial VET, continuing VET and other learning opportunities are accessible and attractive to all learners, regardless of their individual backgrounds or reasons for participating. The data also reflects how well learners can expect to progress through and graduate from these learning opportunities.

Opportunities for lifelong learning: access and participation

In Serbia, vocational education remains the most common choice among young learners, with around three-quarters of fifteen-year-olds enrolled in vocational secondary schools and just under a quarter in general education. This high uptake does not necessarily reflect greater popularity or perceived value. Rather, it is shaped by the limited availability of general education pathways at the secondary level. In 2024, access to vocational education continues to be strong by national and international standards, but this strength stems more from system structure than from growing appeal.

Once enrolled, students—regardless of age—can generally expect conditions that support their progression and completion. However, recent monitoring shows a slight decline in performance in this area. In 2024, fewer graduates continued their education after finishing vocational school. At the same time, while supporting progression is important, it must be balanced with maintaining appropriate standards for assessment. Advancing through the system should reflect actual learning, not just formal completion.

The VET system offers flexibility within the formal education structure, allowing learners to move between general and vocational pathways and across different levels of education. This helps students align their education with their evolving interests and career goals. However, without adequate policy frameworks, it has become harder for learners to navigate between formal education and informal or non-formal learning opportunities—such as workplace training or community-based programmes.

Adult learning in Serbia continues to face barriers, particularly for older adults and women, who remain underrepresented in many programmes. Still, performance in this area improved in 2024 compared to 2023, largely due to increased demand among working-age adults. Access to learning opportunities for adults is slightly better than in other countries covered by the Torino Process, in part because of the support offered through active labour market programmes.

Serbia’s vocational education system remains broadly accessible and flexible, particularly for young learners. While uptake is high, the attractiveness of VET still depends on the availability of alternatives and on how well learning outcomes are assured. Adult learning is gaining momentum, especially among working-age adults, but efforts are still needed to expand access, address gender gaps, and improve pathways between different forms of learning.

The Torino Process is a regular review of national systems of vocational education and training as well as adult education. It is designed to analyse the ways in which national VET systems (including adult education) address the challenges of human capital development in a lifelong learning perspective. It was established by the European Training Foundation (ETF) in 2010 and has been carried out in partner countries in Southeastern Europe, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean ever since.

Monitoring in the context of the Torino Process describes the extent to which countries deliver on their commitments to learners in support of their learning through life (lifelong learning - LLL) in three major areas of policy and system performance: access to learning, quality of learning, and system organisation.

Quality of learning

Quality and relevance of learning is the area of monitoring that identifies how successfully the VET system provides basic skills and key competences to both young and adult learners. It highlights the relevance of VET programmes to the world of work and how effectively VET graduates transition into the labour market. Additionally, it monitors efforts to promote excellence across key domains, including pedagogy, professional development, programme content, governance, and social inclusion, as well as the openness of the VET system to innovation in response to the evolving needs of learners and labour markets.

Lifelong learning outcomes: quality and relevance, excellence and innovation

The quality of learning outcomes in VET in Serbia continues to vary across different learner groups. In 2024, youth in VET still perform slightly below the average observed in other countries, but the share of underachievers in key subjects like mathematics and reading has declined compared to previous years—leading to better overall results in this area. Nevertheless, learning outcomes for youth remain weaker than those of adult learners, especially for students enrolled in three-year vocational programmes, who consistently show the lowest performance. Foundational skills among adults have also declined slightly since 2023, largely due to a drop in ICT competences.

Work-based learning remains a strong feature of the system. In 2024, more than 10,000 students were enrolled in 65 dual education profiles across 150 vocational schools. The dual model has even expanded into higher education, further reinforcing the connection between academic learning and workplace practice. These efforts are contributing to stronger employability outcomes: system performance in support of graduate employability improved in 2024, driven by a falling unemployment rate among recent VET graduates and by growing recognition among policymakers of the role adult learning plays in improving productivity and workforce engagement.

However, challenges remain. Employers still report difficulties in finding candidates with job-specific knowledge, practical skills, and work experience. This points to the need for better alignment between VET content and labour market expectations, and for translating the strengths of work-based learning into more consistent employment outcomes.

Progress in integrating future-oriented themes remains uneven. Serbia stands out for its strong emphasis on green skills and sustainability, but the development of digital competences continues to lag behind. National authorities consistently identify digital skills as a priority—both to boost employability and to improve learning outcomes. The VET system also remains committed to promoting excellence and innovation. Thousands of teachers have taken part in training on outcome-based teaching, and recent years have seen the expansion of regional training centres and dual education options. However, not all learners are equally able to benefit from these developments. Ensuring that quality improvements and innovative practices reach all learners remains a key challenge.

Learning outcomes in Serbia’s VET system continue to show signs of improvement, particularly among youth, though important gaps remain. Adult learners tend to perform better, while students in three-year vocational programmes face persistent challenges in acquiring basic and digital skills. Stronger connections between learning and work have helped improve graduate employability, but employers still struggle to find candidates with the right job-specific competences. While Serbia leads in green skills and invests in innovation and teacher training, ensuring broader access and strengthening digital competences will be essential to boost learning quality and labour market relevance across the board.

System organisation

System organisation is the area of monitoring that captures performance across various domains of management and administration. It examines whether practitioners and leaders have access to data and evidence to support informed decision-making, the level of stakeholder involvement in VET governance, the quality and capacity of staff in leadership positions, and the degree of internationalisation. Additionally, monitoring the allocation of human and financial resources to the VET system helps assess whether these resources effectively support teaching, training, and learning.

System organisation: management and resourcing

Decision-makers in Serbia have access to more reliable data on VET in 2024 than in the previous year, and more so than in many other countries. While the availability of data is strong, there remains room to improve how it is collected, analysed, and used to inform decision-making.

Stakeholder engagement has also strengthened. National authorities are increasingly involving civil society and other stakeholders in the design and evaluation of adult learning and education policies through formal consultation processes. This has contributed to a slight improvement in monitoring results in 2024. The private sector plays an active role through platforms like the Council for Vocational and Adult Education and twelve sectoral councils. These bodies help ensure that vocational qualifications are aligned with labour market needs and EU standards.

Quality assurance is supported by systems such as the National Qualifications Framework, yet access to these benefits is not consistent for all learners. While many internal procedures were maintained or improved in 2024, school accountability weakened markedly. This reflects a shift towards more internally focused practices, with reduced transparency and public reporting on student outcomes. Overall, Serbia’s quality assurance landscape shows both progress and setbacks—solid internal practices, but declining external visibility and stakeholder engagement.

Serbia also places strong emphasis on qualified leadership. More than 1,600 school principals have received training from the Institute for the Improvement of Education. Unlike many other countries, Serbia reports fewer difficulties in maintaining professionalism and leadership quality across its VET institutions. International cooperation is another strength, with active participation in Erasmus+ and other EU programmes helping to strengthen long-term planning and the adoption of good practices from abroad.

Despite these achievements, VET providers still face challenges in securing the necessary resources. While public investment in financial and human resources is significant, many schools continue to lack up-to-date teaching materials and digital infrastructure. In response, the government has introduced new regulations to help ensure schools are better equipped and staffed.

VET in Serbia continues to benefit from strong data availability, stakeholder involvement, and professional leadership. However, the potential of these strengths is not fully realised. The effective use of data for system improvement, more inclusive access to quality assurance, and better resourcing of schools – particularly with regard to learning materials and digital tools – remain areas where further progress is needed.

Promoting access and participation in opportunities for lifelong learning

Supporting quality and relevance of lifelong learning

Index of system performance

International comparability of performance results

In addition to tracking system performance, the Torino Process monitoring provides insights into how internationally comparable each country’s results are, how susceptible they may be to bias, and how critically countries assess their own policies and systems. This is made possible through a methodology that documents the availability, origin, and type of evidence used to calculate each country’s results—including Serbia.

Among all participating countries, Serbia stands out for having the most internationally comparable monitoring results on average, even more than in 2024. These results are also less vulnerable to bias, as a large share is based on quantitative data rather than self-assessment. At the same time, Serbia tends to evaluate the performance of its VET system more favourably than other countries do, according to the findings from this round of monitoring.