Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about education policy in various countries around the world.
On June 1, thousands of people attended rallies throughout Croatia calling for education reform. The mobilization came one year after similar rallies drew tens of thousands into the streets. Yet little has been accomplished during that time, and pro-reform activists accuse the government of contravening the will of the people by undermining the reform effort. In an email interview, Marko Kovacic, project manager at the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb who has previously served as research manager for the GOOD Initiative, a campaign pushing for changes to the education system, describes the problems activists want the authorities to address and why the reform effort seems to have stalled.
WPR: What is the state of Croatia’s education system, in what ways does it currently lag behind other European Union countries, and how does this affect the employability of Croatian graduates and Croatia’s economy?