Education in Croatia - Educational System

Educational System

Although the Croatian's have experienced several wars in the century, they have still been able to surpass these impediments and continue on with their established educational system.

Primary and secondary education is essentially free because it is mostly sponsored by the Ministry of Education of the Croatian Government. 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 result at the set of exams at enrollment).

However, due to the low wages that teachers are being paid there are shortages of teachers throughout Croatia. This shortage of teachers has become an ongoing problem due to the numerous amounts of educational programs in Croatia.

Much criticism has been emphasized towards the students' participation rate in the classroom and their implementation of policies. According to Joseph Lowther, the Croatian “shares of education expenditure are 4% of the GDP which is well under the European average”.

Croatia signed the Bologna declaration at the Prague meeting of ministers in charge of lower education in 2009, thereby promising to adjust its system of higher education to the so-called Bologna process by 2010. The first students enrolled under the new setup in the academic year 2005/2006.

In 2005, the Croatian Government decided to start a redesign of the programme of primary and secondary education under the title Hrvatski nacionalni obrazovni standard (Croatian national educational standard). In the school year 2005/2006, a new system was tested in 5% of the primary schools.