About the school

Matko Vuković Primary School in Subotica was founded in 1892. Today we nurture tradition, quality teaching and cooperation with families — across three locations in the city.

Our school

We provide education for students from grade 1 to 8 in a safe, supportive environment aligned with the regulations of the Republic of Serbia.

School history

The school was built in 1892, with large, bright classrooms fully suited to the pedagogical standards of the time — “and even larger European cities would not be ashamed of it,” as the monthly magazine Neven wrote on 1 October 1892.

Enrolment registers from 1871 to 1881, kept in the school archive, show that a school already stood on this site. It was a single-storey building known locally as the “Rundov school”, after the inn “Kod rundova”, on whose site it had been raised at the beginning of the 19th century. Those registers show that almost all pupils were of Bunjevac nationality, with a mother tongue the authorities then called “Dalmatian”. Socially, most children came from families of farmers, day-labourers, shepherds, farmhands (hirelings), washerwomen, a few craftsmen mostly of German nationality, and two or three landowners of Hungarian nationality.

The language of instruction was Hungarian, while teachers could also use Bunjevac as an auxiliary language. The Bunjevac monthly Neven of 1 December 1892 reports that four new teachers were appointed for Bunjevac schools, among them the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Mijo Mandić. In the 1893/94 school year the same Mijo Mandić taught at this school. He later became director of the City Library and Museum, and after the liberation in 1945 was named an honorary citizen of Subotica. A street near our school still bears his name.

The school was a four-grade school. Under Austria-Hungary and between the two world wars it was named “King Aleksandar”, though locally it has been known as the “Pigeon school” since the early 20th century because of the nearby pigeon market. Older residents of the area still use that name today.

During the Hungarian occupation of 1941–1944 the building remained a primary school; after liberation it became a reception camp and quarantine for returnees from captivity, camps and exile. In the school reform of 1950 it became eight-year school No. 3, joined by two other primary schools from Vašarište — one with Serbo-Croatian and one with Hungarian as the language of instruction. The first principal was Prof. Janoš Kopilović. The staff numbered 19 teachers. In 1952 the first School Board was formed as an early form of social self-management.

On 31 October 1962, before many guests and civic representatives, a bust of Matko Vuković by sculptor Ana Bešlić was unveiled in the school hall — and the school has borne his name ever since. School Day was first set as 31 October, the day this worker and landless peasant, a son of his people, was brutally killed without betraying a single name. In 2007 the School Board decided that School Day would thenceforth be marked on 13 February, Matko Vuković’s birthday.