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Experts Fear for Croatia’s Education Reforms

January 16, 201708:33
Croatian experts say they fear the current centre-right government will either alter plans for comprehensive curriculum reform in a conservative direction - or abandon the reform altogether.
Protesters supporting the curriculum reform in June in front of the government building. Photo: Sven Milekic/BIRN

As work in Croatia on comprehensive reform of the curriculum appears to stall, some scientists say they fear the education system will be modernised in a conservative direction or abandoned altogether.  

Marko Kovacic, from the Zagreb Institute for Social Research, who was involved in protests aimed at keeping the reform going, said the Education Ministry had so far only issued a new tender for a new expert working group.

He told BIRN that the reform would be implemented in the end, however, as it forms a part of the national strategy on education, science and technology supported by the European Commission.

What he fears is that the alterations will be less progressive than was originally planned, resulting in an education system that “stays conservative” – both in ideology and in the sense of not following the latest trends in education, which focus on developing skills rather than absorbing facts.

The committee for implementation of curricular reform was formed last July by the former Science and Education Minister, Predrag Sustar.

According to Kovacic, the committee, led by a state secretary in the new centre-right government, Matko Gluncic, and by the Rector of the University of Zadar, Dijana Vican, had made factual mistakes in analysing the work of the old expert working group, headed by Boris Jokic. This resigned last May, claiming pressure from the small right-wing party government party Hrast [Oak] – Movement for Successful Croatia, led by Ladislav Ilcic.

Neither Vican nor Gluncic could be reached for comment, while the ministry did not respond to BIRN’s inquiries regarding work on curriculum reform.

The reform, which aims to radically overhaul Croatia’s obsolete educational system, was initiated by the former centre-left government.

The core idea was to enable pupils and later students to learn skills, besides facts, and so become more competitive on the labour market.

The expert working group on the reform comprised experts from different fields, as well as teachers and professors, and worked for over 16 months on the draft of the reform.

After the working group resigned, protests in support of the stalled reform were held in a number of cities. The last was held in front of the building of the Croatian government on the day the former centre-right government under Tihomir Oreskovic fell.

Another scientist who took part in the protests, Political Sciences Professor Berto Salaj, told BIRN that he fears the reform will “actually slowly die out.

“Curriculum reform actually stopped the moment Jokic resigned … in the government at the moment there is an implicit consensus that the reform slowly should die out by itself, although Prime Minister [Andrej] Plenkovic and [Education] Minister [Pavo] Barisic declaratively support it,” he said.

Salaj said he believes the current government is giving up the model of curriculum reform and the national strategy on science, education and technology as “it existed until June”.

He said he also doubted the government has “any idea of what the potentially new strategy and reform should look like”.

Salaj concluded that the ministry is troubled by recent controversies surrounding both Gluncic and Minister Barisic.

While guesting on regional N1 TV in December, Gluncic explained the poor results achieved by 15-year-old Croatian pupils noted in the scope of the OSCE Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA 2015, claiming that in Croatia the program had included “children with special treatment and [pupils from] national minorities”.

After the head of PISA 2015 research in Croatia, Michelle Bras Rot, said those children were not included in the research, Gluncic admitted his mistake, adding that he apologised “if someone misunderstood his statement”.

“It was not my intention to discriminate against anyone, or to put them in a negative context,” he said, claiming that immediately after the show he realised that what he had said, “wasn’t politically correct”.

Barisic attracted even more attention after the science and higher education ethics committee – the highest state body monitoring ethical values in science – on Tuesday said he had plagiarised parts of his science paper “Does Globalization Threaten Democracy”.

The committee reached its decision on the case on December 28, finding that Barisic had taken parts of US academic Stephen Schlesinger’s work without giving proper attribution.

Schlesinger confirmed to the Croatian news portal Index in October 2016 that Barisic’s article did not credit him duly, which he said “constitutes an act of plagiarism”.

Barisic again disputed the claims on Tuesday, claiming that the “printing mistake” was corrected back in 2010, before the claim was raised in 2011.