engleski

Country report: Croatia

Considering a high level of economic and social development, a substantial private sector and a significant strategic position, Croatia had a good starting point at the beginning of transition. What brought Croatia back in the process of development was the war for independence which caused severe infrastructure and economic damages, not to mention over a half of million people exiled from their homes (at times, more than 8% of the total population) and the loss of over 10 000 human lives. The major industry – tourism, was also damaged along with the loss of major export markets in ex-Yugoslav republics. The war and the economic recession contributed to a great economic crisis, which was eased in 1993. But the recovery was not strong enough. There are also political factors affecting this situation. The process of privatization did not go as smooth as could have been expected, and a lot of it is being revised today. The failure of many companies after the privatization left even more people jobless, so the government decided to apply a temporary solution to unemployment by sending people to early retirement. That caused a great problem for the pension system, burdening it with about two users of the retirement fund on three employed people. The SMEs are underdeveloped, and at the same time the gray economy, tax evasion and corruption are taking place on both the micro and the macro level. In former Yugoslavia the eighties were marked by an educational reform of a specific type, which has left its trace until the present time. The so-called Career Oriented Education from the turn of seventies into eighties faced a double task: to answer political challenges of liberalism and civil society movements of the seventies and at the same time to adjust education to the needs of society (that is: modernization). The ideological dimension was also part of the reform: in a multi-ethnic society the centralist powers demanded stronger harmonization of mother tongue and literature, history etc. across the entire federation – a demand which provoked fierce revolt. The reform in the early 1980s brought about a system of 8-year basic education followed by a career oriented education: a vertical composed of cascade of programs leading up to higher education. Higher education was not regulated as a special sub-system any more ; universities were atomized into numerous highly independent faculties. The basic idea of the reform was 'to join a school and a factory' and was based on the belief that further development of economy and society could be forecasted in a firm way and that the enrolment into upper secondary and tertiary education could be rationally planned. As a result, this educational reform lead to non-adequate human resource development and even a stagnation of educational structure of the population. It is characteristic today that the proportion of students in general education is low and that it is high in VET. This fact should be considered in a particular context of the career-oriented education of the 1980s. The upper secondary general education (gymnasia) was abolished at the beginning of the eighties (all upper secondary education then became vocationally oriented) and it was partly reconstructed only at the beginning of the 1990s, while VET mostly still consists of study programs rooted in the eighties. The levels of education governance are (a) central - Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) ; (b) regional – 21 counties (*upanije), and 5 regional units focused on quality control (inspection) and evaluation ; (c) local – schools (the decline of birth rate, abandonment of some areas by the local population due to the war, were the main reasons why some schools closed down. The educational system in the Republic of Croatia comprises of pre-school education, eight-year primary education (compulsory and free for all children from seven to fifteen years of age), secondary education and tertiary education (chart 4). The system of secondary education in Croatia consists of general education (i.e. general-program secondary schools), and technical or vocational education. There are two types of vocational schools: some ensure classic vocational education and training, which is organized in schools, and others offer dual programs based on the German model. The dual system of education has been in place since 1995. Since then the number of newly opened dual programs of vocational education and apprenticeship has been growing so that today it includes 55 occupations. Practice is represented in the ratio of 2:1 as compared to general-education and vocational theoretical curriculum. As a rule, practical training is organized in craft shops, and to a lesser degree in school workshops. Tertiary education comprises of universities as the main source of scientific work (university studies), and colleges, independent higher schools and accredited private higher schools, which attach great importance to the practical application of acquired knowledge (professional studies). In Croatia there are four universities (in Zagreb, Split, Osijek and Rijeka), with around seventy faculties, art academies, higher schools, university departments, seven colleges (in Zagreb, Karlovac, Rijeka, Split, Dubrovnik and Požega), eight independent higher schools (in Čakovec, Križevci, Petrinja, Rijeka, Split, Šibenik and Zagreb) and three accredited private higher schools. Existing problems in our society, generated by the structural economic crisis, intensified by unsuccessful policies for its solution, affect the lives of the youth and prolong their social and economic dependence and social marginalization. Unemployment is always significantly more evident among youth, and if it lasts for a longer period of time, it seriously slows down their achievement of socio-economic independence. In the context of youth unemployment, problems specific for youth are rarely recognized. These are, for example, the lack of a mechanism that would provide gradual transition of youth from the passive to the active part of the population, the lack of processes through which they could acquire necessary experience for their first job, the inaccessibility of financial support for their entrepreneurial initiatives.

vocational education and training; disadvantaged young people; Croatia; education; employment

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