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School Achievement in Urban and Rural Areas in Croatia: Is the quality of education equal for all?

The equality in education is an issue that, at the normative level, occupies the majority of countries in the world, regardless of their constitutional arrangement, level of socioeconomic development or geographic location. All countries are more or less alike in their educational policy aspirations to ensure equal opportunities for a quality education to all individuals and social groups. However, the countries certainly differ with respect to how actively they pursue these aspirations in the educational reality, which is reflected in the equality of the educational outcomes. In this chapter, the results of an empirical study examining the educational outcomes in primary schools situated in different parts of Croatia are presented, using the comprehensive data collected in a national examination. The educational achievements in the majority of subjects covered by the curriculum are examined in approximately 100, 000 fourth and eighth grade students attending all of 844 primary schools in Croatia, which served as an indicator of educational outcomes. The results show that significant differences in achievement exist between schools situated in urban and rural areas, and that the schools in the more socioeconomically developed areas are significantly more successful than schools in more deprived areas. The study clearly points to currently unequal opportunities in different schools within the Croatian primary education system. As numerous empirical studies indicate, inequalities are rarely randomly distributed and they usually affect entire social groups. In the case of Croatia, it is highly likely that those groups are shaped on the basis of the level of urbanization and socioeconomic development of different parts of the country, which is the key factor that produces inequalities in the educational system. In that context, the policy makers should design and implement systematic interventions aimed at minimizing the inequalities in the educational opportunities derived from socioeconomic deprivation in order to equilibrate educational outcomes at the level of compulsory primary education.

equality in education, quality of education, school achievement, urban school, rural school, primary school, Croatia

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