International schools in Serbia outside Belgrade

Novi Sad, Niš and Jagodina have five between them. What each one teaches, who it will take, and the cities where there is nothing.

Updated September 2026 · schools' own pages read 7 September 2026

The five schools, and what each one is

Every line read off each school's own website on 7 September 2026. Neither the International Baccalaureate's school register nor Cambridge International's would return results to us, so no authorisation on this page has been checked against the awarding body itself — the programmes are as each school describes them. That is a weaker standard than we hold the Belgrade schools to, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

Novi Sad: three schools, three different answers

Novi Sad is the only city outside Belgrade with a choice, and the three schools there answer three different questions.

Gimnazija „Jovan Jovanović Zmaj” runs an IB Diploma Programme funded by the Ministry of Education — a state school, free, and among the first in Serbia to take the IB on. It takes twenty students a year into the third and fourth grade of gimnazija, on an entrance exam in mathematics, Serbian and English, and the school runs free preparation classes for candidates. Its language policy requires every Diploma student to take Serbian A: Literature at Higher Level, and it publishes no alternative for a student whose Serbian is not strong. For a relocating family that is the deciding fact: the programme is taught in English, but it is not built for a child who does not already have Serbian.

Clever International School is private, registered with the ministry and founded in 2015, and it is the only school outside Belgrade offering a full age range in English — Cambridge from age five to nineteen, with a mixed Cambridge-and-Serbian track and, at primary only, a Serbian-and-Russian one. One published detail matters more than any prospectus line: the school states that students at Cambridge Upper Secondary and Advanced level “need to attend a registered Cambridge International venue to sit their exams” and that it helps find one, “also in Belgrade”. IGCSEs and A Levels are therefore sat somewhere else.

The American Institute Allied With Thornton Academy opened in 2022 and is the only American-curriculum school in the country — Belgrade has none, which is why families looking for one end up choosing something else there. It is a day and boarding school for grades 9 to 12, teaching Advanced Placement courses in partnership with Thornton Academy in Saco, Maine, alongside the Serbian national programme approved by the Provincial Secretariat for Education. It is also the only school in this set that publishes an English threshold for entry — Duolingo 95, TOEFL 70, IELTS 6 or CEFR B2 — with an ESL programme for students below it. Applications for the autumn close on 31 May with decisions by 15 June, and it says transfers into the spring semester are considered “on a limited basis”.

Niš: the one that thought about foreign students

Niš has one, and it is the school on this page most obviously built to take a child from abroad — which is not what you would expect from a state gimnazija in Serbia's third city.

Gimnazija „Svetozar Marković” runs the IB Diploma Programme in English for the last two years of secondary school, and unlike its counterpart in Novi Sad it publishes a route for students who do not have Serbian: a School-supported Self-taught Language A, described in its own language policy as available “to foreign students who join our school and wish to maintain and develop literacy in their native language”, with Serbian lessons provided alongside. A child can therefore take the Diploma in Niš in English while keeping their own first language as the literature subject.

The catch is in the admissions policy, and it is a hard one. Students “must have been enrolled in a Gymnasium school for the first two years of secondary education prior to applying”, with an overall average of no less than 4.5, top marks in English in both years and at least a 4 in mathematics and Serbian. Entry is by an exam in English, Serbian and mathematics, and twenty students are admitted. A family arriving from abroad into the final two years of school will not meet the two-year condition, and the policy does not say what happens then.

Jagodina: the boarding option

International School Crnjanski in Jagodina is the only boarding school in this guide, and it is a different proposition from everything else on this page: a private school describing itself as covering ages one to nineteen, teaching Cambridge alongside the Serbian national programme, with full and flexi boarding.

Two things to be careful about. First, it is not the Belgrade school of a similar name: Obrazovni sistem „Crnjanski” in Belgrade, which this guide profiles separately, is a different institution at a different address. Second, its published admissions process is the only one outside Belgrade that explicitly expects a foreign family — it asks for passports, proof of residence and citizenship documents, and for a nostrified certificate of previously acquired education, meaning prior schooling abroad has to be recognised in Serbia before enrolment rather than after. There is no entrance exam; candidates spend a day at the school instead.

The cities where we found nothing

We searched in both English and Serbian for international, bilingual, Cambridge, IGCSE, A Level and IB provision in Kragujevac, Subotica, Čačak, Zrenjanin and Pančevo, and checked four school directories. We found none. What those searches return is language schools — evening and weekend English courses — which are a different thing and are not on this page.

Pančevo deserves a footnote: it is close enough to Belgrade that families there realistically use the Belgrade schools, so the absence of a local one means less than it does in Niš.

Two schools that appear on expatriate directories as being in Novi Sad — an “International School of Novi Sad” and a “Novi Sad International School” — have no website, no address and no trace we could find anywhere else. We are not listing them. If either exists and we have missed it, tell us and we will check it and add it.

What this means if you are choosing a city

The pattern behind all of the above is worth stating plainly, because it changes where a family agrees to live.

• Nothing outside Belgrade covers primary in an international programme except Clever and Crnjanski. The two IB schools start at sixteen. If your child is eight and the job is in Niš, there is no international school for them in that city.
• Both non-Belgrade IB programmes are state schools, and both are free — the funding comes from the Ministry. That is a genuinely different offer from anything in Belgrade, where the only state IB is Deseta gimnazija.
• Serbian is the real gate, not English. Both IB departments teach in English; the difference between them is whether a child without Serbian can be accommodated at all. Niš publishes a route. Novi Sad does not.
• Nowhere outside Belgrade offers a foreign national system — no French, German or Russian school, and no embassy school. Those exist in Belgrade only, and this guide covers all of them.

Questions families ask