Due to mass emigration, many areas are left with few or no children.
The consequences of mass emigration from Croatia and the decreasing number of births will be visible this school year which begins in less than a week, reports Index.hr on August 28, 2018.
As many as eight branch schools will be closed, while 117 schools have not enrolled a single first grade student this year. Of the eight schools which will be closed, six will be shut because there are no students to attend them and two because the students will be moved to other newly-constructed schools.
“According to the provisional data received from the county state administration offices, in the 2018/2019 school year, there will be no classes in six branch schools where there are no pupils, as well as in two branch schools of the Poreč Primary School, because students will attend classes in the newly-built Finida Primary School in Poreč, which will start operations when the new school year begins,” announced the Ministry of Science and Education.
Schools closing down this year:
Also, according to the provisional data received from the state administration offices in counties, no students have been enrolled in 117 branch and primary schools. Varaždin County and in the City of Zagreb are the only areas where there are no schools with no pupils in the first grade.
In the 19 counties with schools which have been left with no first-graders, there were 1,136 branch schools operating last year. “If we compare the percentage of schools with no first grade pupils, then it amounts to 9.95%. At the county level, the highest percentage of elementary schools with no first graders is in Šibenik-Knin County (20%), Vukovar-Srijem County (19.44%) and Lika-Senj County (18.18%). Since this is interim data, changes are possible,” the ministry explained.
They added that, despite not having enrolled any students in the first grade, these schools will not close down because they have older students. “In most of these schools, classes will be held for students from grades 2 to 4,” concluded the ministry.
Translated from Index.hr (reported by Martina Pauček Šljivak)
