A new look for Croatian primary education.
Croatia will introduce a nine-year primary education, said the minister of science, education and sports Vedran Mornar in an interview with Nova TV. “That is our strategy. We shall see when precisely it will happen, but probably in the school year 2018/2019 we are going to have experimental implementation, which will be followed later by full implementation. That has already been done by many countries. Croatia is a country where children start going to school later than in almost all the other European countries and we have to go in this direction”, said Mornar, reports Vecernji List on September 5, 2015.
The minister said that he believes there will be no cuts in the budget for education. As far as the curriculum reform is concerned, he said the progress was evident. “Now we are in the third stage, with working groups doing their job. We have created to a certain degree the framework for the national curriculum”, said the minister.
“Our educational system is overloaded with facts. We are now turning towards understanding and problem-solving, so the students are prepared for the lifelong learning process”, he added. “We have begun to establish the value system in which the knowledge is at the top. When today’s children reach the age when they start getting jobs, you will see that the whole thing was worth it”, said Mornar.
The ombudsman for children Ivana Milas Klarić sent to the Ministry and the Croatian Bishops Conference a recommendation to review the content of textbooks and take the necessary actions to eliminate discriminatory content. Mornar said that his ministry would certainly do that and that children who do not want to attend religious education will be able to get an alternative. He also said that it would be a shame for the scandals involving final exams in high schools to cast a shadow on what is, in his opinion, “the most successful project in the history of the Croatian education system”.
