Education in Croatia
Since 2016, enrollment in higher educational institutions is determined by a student's scores on the Matura high-school exit exam.
Five-year university programs enable students to work in science, education, business, the public sector, etc., and can be at undergraduate (BA), graduate (MA) or postgraduate (PhD) level.
Today, there are 940 primary and 370 secondary schools, as well as 90 public and 32 private higher education institutions in Croatia.
Higher education is also mostly free because the government funds all public universities and allows them to set quotas for free enrollment, based on students' prior results (usually high school grades and their scores on a set of exams at enrollment).
According to Joseph Lowther, the Croatian “shares of education expenditure are 4% of the GDP which is well under the European average”.
According to Joseph Lowther, the Croatian “shares of education expenditure are 4% of the GDP which is well under the European average”.
In a pilot initiative, 920 instructors and over 6 000 pupils from 151 schools received computers, tablets, and presentation equipment, as well as improved connection and teacher training.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, those schools were ready to begin offering online programs within two days.
[13] The majority of schools offer either English, German or Italian language classes as early as 1st grade.
The most popular foreign languages are English, German and Italian, followed by Spanish, French and Russian.
[11] People who have completed only primary education are classified as "unqualified workers" (Croatian: nekvalificirani radnik or NKV) by the employment bureaus.
People who complete secondary school are classified as medium expertise (srednja stručna sprema or SSS).
People who previously completed a veleučilište were classified as having higher expertise (viša stručna sprema or VŠS).
People who previously completed a sveučilište were classified as having high expertise (visoka stručna sprema or VSS).
Since the Bologna process, the levels of expertise are: All larger universities in Croatia are composed of independent faculties (fakultet, meaning college or department).
The colleges focus on specific areas of learning: natural sciences, philosophy, law, engineering, economy, architecture, medicine, and so on.
The universities of Dubrovnik, North (Koprivnica, Varaždin), Pula, Slavonski Brod and Zadar do not have independent colleges.
[24] In September 2010 a religious organisation, Hrvatska kršćanska koalicija[25] submitted a proposal[26] to change the law so home education would become legal in Croatia.
If the child does not pass all the exams in two attempts, they are ordered to continue the education with regular school attendance.
Like in the case of Slovenia and Montenegro, the proposed model does not impose any limitation on who can home educate.
The proposed model was chosen as it requires minimal change to the existing law and would be possible to implement within the current educational framework.
