Education and Skills in Croatia

Executive summary

Over the last two decades, Croatia’s education and skills system has achieved impressive outcomes. School completion is near universal, tertiary attainment is steadily increasing and learning outcomes have remained stable in international assessments - even through the pandemic. Nevertheless, access to quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) is still limited and foundational skills remain a concern, especially for disadvantaged and rural learners, while the transition from school to work remains difficult, despite high enrolment in vocational programmes. Positively, recent reforms are starting to tackle these issues. A new competence-based curriculum, whole-day schooling, and more flexible vocational pathways aim to improve foundational learning and expand opportunities for all learners. The new performance-based funding model in tertiary education and the adult learning voucher scheme are also helping to address participation barriers and better align education with labour market needs. With a shrinking workforce and growing skills gaps, these efforts are timely. This review explores how Croatia can build on its progress, using OECD evidence and experience to further strengthen quality, equity and governance in its education and skills system in support of economic and social development.

Quality of programmes and outcomes

Most students in Croatia complete upper secondary education, with early school leaving rates the lowest in the EU. The OECD Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 also shows that learning outcomes are converging with the OECD average and have remained stable over time. However, while Croatia successfully avoided the sharp decline in PISA performance experienced by many OECD countries after the COVID-19 pandemic, little progress has been made in reducing the share of students struggling to master basic competencies. At the same time, opportunities for post-secondary learning remain heavily skewed towards academic pathways, even though vocational programmes dominate at upper secondary level. This imbalance partly contributes to high drop-out from tertiary education, slow school-to-work transitions, and unmet demand for skills.

To address these challenges, Croatia has embarked on an ambitious reform agenda. This involves expanding access to ECEC and lengthening the school day through the Whole-Day Schooling reform, as well as adopting a new competence-based curriculum and developing a new modular model to increase flexibility in upper secondary vocational education and training (VET). In addition, the new funding model for tertiary education institutions focuses on improving the relevance and quality of education, incorporating performance-based financing to incentivise better outcomes in both education and research.

The review suggests further steps to strengthen the quality of Croatia’s education programmes and outcomes. Croatia can consider enhancing the professional agency of teachers and school leaders, including rethinking leadership roles and support structures in schools and early education settings. It also explores more fundamental policy changes to the design of Croatia’s post-secondary education and training landscape, namely expanding professionally oriented “mid-level” programmes and qualifications (ISCED 4 and 5). Such programmes have become an important driver for broadening attainment in many OECD countries but are very limited in Croatia.

Equality of opportunity and access

While Croatia’s universalist approach has expanded ECEC participation, helped most students progress through schooling, and enabled many to pursue higher education, significant inequalities remain in access quality provision. Children from wealthier families and urban areas tend to access more diverse and prestigious educational opportunities, which sets them on a path to better outcomes in life. Gender gaps are also a concern: women and girls outperform in education, but these gains do not translate into equal outcomes in the labour market, while underachievement among boys is growing.

Croatia has already put in place some policies to mitigate inequalities in its education and skills system. These include a central equalisation fund that helps sub-national governments meet funding standards for the public provision of ECEC and schooling, social scholarships for tertiary education, and a voucher scheme for adult learning. These efforts are aimed at reducing barriers to education participation and delivery.

This review offers considerations to support Croatia in further improving equity across the system. Building on existing initiatives, Croatia could better target resources to the most vulnerable—for example, through guaranteed access to financial support for tertiary students and families with children to enroll in ECEC. The review also looks at how OECD countries use flexible early learning opportunities outside of formal education as well as social and learning support mechanisms to better guide and help all learners to succeed. Furthermore, reviewing selection mechanisms into upper secondary education to make them more merit-based could help make the system fairer and more inclusive, while creating more entry point into higher levels of education could help expand access to learning for younger and older adults alike.

Good governance

Croatia has made significant progress in modernising its education and skills system, supported by economic growth and increased public spending on education, alongside substantial EU funding. These investments are now driving reforms across all sectors, from early childhood to adult learning. However, complex governance and funding arrangements have contributed to regional disparities and inefficiencies. In early childhood and school education, policy is set centrally, while local authorities—often with limited resources—are responsible for planning, delivery and co-financing. In skills and higher education, overlapping mandates and weak co-ordination between ministries and institutions make it harder to steer reform and ensure consistent quality across the system.

This review identifies three areas where Croatia could learn from OECD evidence and experience to adapt governance and funding arrangements to better support reforms and improve education quality and equity. First, Croatia could explore ways to consolidate capacity across government and institutions to improve policy co-ordination, strategic planning and resource use. Second, reviewing funding allocations can help Croatia respond to demographic shifts and the need for higher productivity, and better target resources. For example, Croatia can consider removing cost barriers for the most vulnerable children in ECEC and rebalancing resources to support a more diverse post-school education and training system that better meets adult and economic needs. Finally, improving data collection on the quality of ECEC and schooling, and learner outcomes and transitions across key levels will be key to supporting reform implementation and monitoring.