The EFA 2000 Assessment: Country Reports
Croatia

LEARNING ACHIEVEMENTS AND OUTCOMES

The Law on Primary Education in the Republic of Croatia enables primary school pupils in grades from 1 through 3 to pass on to the next grade upon decision by the Teachers' Council even if they had one failing or negative mark. Therefore, the survival rate to primary grade 4 is 100 percent.

The quality of knowledge is rated by marks. In recent years there has been no major survey in the country to focus solely on learning achievements. The Rules set forth by the Ministry of Education and Sports on the method of monitoring and rating of primary and secondary school pupils provide detailed procedures for: monitoring of the progress of pupils during the school year, checking out, examining and rating their knowledge, skills and capacities, and implementation of acquired knowledge, as well as systematic recording of observations about development of interests, motivation, abilities, achievements in acquiring educational contents, attitude toward work and assignments, and educational values. One year later, the Ministry of Education and Sports brought Guidelines for rating pupils' school success-performance to help teachers in this demanding work. Besides, numerous professional actives and seminars for all workers in educational institutions were held on the theme of assessment of learning achievements and outcomes of pupils in all educational systems. The permanent professional improvement of educational workers always aims at raising the quality of education of children and it is for this reason a continuous process.

With intention to make this report as complete and comprehensive as can be and the results of and outcomes of learning amts as accurate as possible, the Republic of Croatia took part, in the end of May 1999, in the work of the sub regional workshop of the international project called Monitoring Learning Achievement (MLA) in Bratislava, Slovakia. At the meeting, the instruments were defined jointly for measuring educational achievements of primary grade 4 pupils as well as survey questionnaires for pupils, parents, teachers, and school heads-principals.

The goal of this survey was to establish the quality of pupils' knowledge for the targeted age group in the domain of literacy, mathematical skills and knowledge, and the acquired life skills. Also, the goal was to determine the correlation of their educational achievements with conditions for learning in school, opportunities for work at home, level of education of parents, additional educational contents outside school, and a series of other factors that may substantially influence the quality of education.

The purpose – the Resolution on Inclusion of the Republic of Croatia into the project was brought just before the end of the school year because the initial information and actual instructions for work came in very late. The survey was carried out in the last week of the school year, the time that pupils were "fed up" with examinations and tests, nervous about parting with their four-year class teacher, and excited about the coming summer vacations or school excursions. Also, it was no easier for other examinees. Therefore, the results of this measurement should be observed in the light of an unfavorably designated instance of time imposed by late inclusion into the project. The basic purpose of the survey was to establish the learning achievements of the surveyed pupils. The experience of the survey would be the base for devising other instruments and models for measuring the quality of knowledge so as to apply them in the coming school years and include other age groups of children in primary education in order to obtain clear guidelines for improvement and enhancement of educational work and outcomes in all subsystems.

The sample – the survey covered only 46 of all 50 planned fourth grades of primary schools (some schools were unable to respond due to objective reasons). The stratified sample of the total of 1068 pupils was based on the principle of representation of all counties, with one school from urban and one from rural environment, and six primary schools from the capital divided into three schools from suburban residential areas and three from the city. Moreover, the size of the school was taken into account as well as the proportion of the shift work and also represented were small schools from islands and villages, with their particular and specific problems.

Before making any analysis of the obtained data, it is important to mention that the instruments made at the regional workshop in Bratislava did not meet in full the contents of the primary grade 4 curriculum but we did not modify them, accordingly to the agreement with other countries – participants of the regional meeting. The teachers, in whose classes the survey was implemented, received a detailed explanation and instructions for work.

Indicator 15:

Results of the Monitoring of Learning Achievement - MLA

Literacy – one of the measured dimensions was screened by the test consisting of the following key elements:
understanding of the read texts

• written expression
• richness of vocabular
• rate of acquired grammar and spelling rules.

All together were tested 1009 pupils who solved the test at the rate of 79,01%. In the interview for pupils we obtained data indicating that 15,8% of pupils in this school year have read less than 5 books, 42% of pupils have read 6-10 books, and 40% of pupils have read more than 10 books. Of course, this affects directly the development of vocabulary and speaks about the acquired reading habit. Those who have read the least books have the poorest performance in the literacy and mathematics tests. The highest performance was found in pupils who have read the middle number of books (6-10 books). It must be stressed that there were differences by gender. Significantly more boys have read just 1-5 books a year and significantly more girls have read more than 10 books a year. However, in general, boys performed better in the test.

Mathematical skills and knowledge - measured using the test with questions including the following:
measures of time, difficulty and duration,

• making out in the data table and logic reasoning and connecting these data,
• basic arithmetic operations and initial geometry skills and knowledge.

The performance rate in solving the test was 69,7%. We must add that the mathematics curriculum for primary grade 4 is far more difficult and complex than the test. Therefore, it is possible to suppose that a number of pupils wrongfully and hastily gave answers to these far too simple questions. The statistical computation of results of 1024 pupils repeatedly indicates the higher performance of boys.

Life skills – were tested using the test containing questions in the range from attitudes toward healthy feeding, self-protection, to social values and skills. Pupils achieved the best results here – even 87,9% of correct answers. Tested were 1027 pupils.

The analysis of variance found that pupils from towns (city center and suburbs) were better than pupils from rural schools in the literacy and mathematics tests. No difference was detected in the life skills test.

Learning achievements depend on a variety of different factors, which more or less influence the educational outcomes, directly or indirectly. By interviewing pupils and their parents we learned about some very interesting indicators and established certain correlations.

Attitude toward school and emotions

Pupils showed their attitude toward education in several required answers:

How much they like school : 14,6% of pupils like going to school very much 57,7% of pupils like going to school 27,4% pupils do not quite like going to school

That girls like going to school more than boys is visible from the left graph: The correlation of these answers and results of the applied tests tells us that children who do not like school have poorer success in the literacy test.

In school, pupils feel: 51,5% - fear the examination 42,9% - fear the bad marks 3,1% - fear the principal-school head 2,4% - fear the teacher Girls are more afraid of examination and boys fear more the bad marks and teachers.

Boredom in school: Not felt by 58,8% of pupils Felt by 40,3% of pupils

Subject they like best:

15% - mother tongue
21,3% - nature and society related subjects
27% - mathematics
35,1% - some other subjects (in this age group, the children like best the educational subjects like art, music and body-health culture).

Socioeconomic and educational conditions of life of pupils

Parents and family as a whole as one of the crucial educational factors should be observed from several different aspects.

Completeness of the family:

89,7% of pupils live with both parents,
7,8% of pupils live with mother only

• Number of family members:

86,8% of pupils have siblings,
47,1% of pupils live in four-member families,
23,3% of pupils live in five-member families,
36,4% of pupils have brothers and sisters going to school.

• Tenancy and material conditions:

72,7% of the interviewed families live in their own house or apartment
81,1% of parents receive monthly salaries or wages
4,8% of parents receive pensions
6,6% of families live on agriculture (farming)
3,8% of parents live on a kind of private business
2,8% of parents receive social support (allowance)

Te conditions in which the tested pupils live and get educated is an important factor producing indirect effects on the learning achievement. Complete families, solved material and tenancy conditions, and a steady monthly income contribute for sure to a higher quality education respectively the better care for children. Parents unburdened with subtenant's lease, unemployment or personal marital differences are more likely to provide their children with more of daily monitoring of their school duties and progress. Here are some indicators corroborating this presumption:

Interest of parents in daily events in school:

90,8% of parents talks with their children about school regularly,
7,5% do that occasionally,
0,2% never do that.

The high percent of parents talking with their children about school indicates the care and interest, level of being informed about school events and intention to monitor the child's school activities through conversation at least.

Participation of parents in school activities of pupils:

45% of parents participate on a regular basis,
49% of parents participate occasionally,
4,3% of parents never participate.

• Response to parental meetings is an indicator of the regular informing of parents about the child's progress in school. During a school year there are four to five meetings with parents in average. The following is an overview of presence of parents at the parental meetings from primary grade 1 to 4:
  

The data analysis shows that parents mostly respond to parental meeting in primary grade 1 while in the grade 4 they come to these meetings less frequently. However, about 60% of parents were present at all four meetings in each grade.

The data in the table confirm the participation of parents in the daily school duties of the child. It is significant that in doing homework mothers still prevail. Having observed the correlation of success in tests of knowledge and participation of parents in learning and doing homework we learned something interesting. Actually, in the mathematics and life skills test, the pupils who mothers helped occasionally were more successful than those helped by their mothers all the time. The statistical computation showed that the help provided by fathers had no substantial influence on the learning achievements.

  Level of education of parents

Possibilities for helping children learn depend on the educational level of parents and are reduced in the later stages of education of children. In this sample, only 1,5% of parents were with unfinished primary education; only 15 parents were not able to help their children at home. 14,4% of parents have finished primary school but we estimate that their education level will soon be insufficient for help in learning. The majority of the interviewed parents (58,6%) have finished secondary level education, 10,9% has the higher-level education and 14,4% of parents have academic level education. So, we may conclude that the majority of parents have real capacities to monitor their children's education for at least a few more years. Pupils whose parents have academic degree achieved higher success in the literacy and mathematics tests, whereas in the life skills test there were no significant differences.

  Commendations and warnings

Motivation for learning depends also on commen-dations and praises res-pectively warnings and reprimands from parents. The graph shows that mothers make more praises and commendations but also warn and reprimand the children more often. Comparing this with data brought forth so far we cannot help concluding that mothers as an educational factor are more present in the education of children.

• Attitudes of parents toward the education of their children

Satisfaction with the existing education system and quality of education that the children can acquire was expressed by 83,6% of parents, 12,8% expressed partial satisfaction, and only 0,6% of parents were completely unsatisfied.

The affirmative attitude toward the schooling was noticed in 72% of parents who agreed with the statement that investing money in education was a good investment, and almost 80% of parents made no difference between the need for education of both girls and boys.

Work habits and free time
It is interesting to compare the answers of pupils and their parents to the question when the homework tasks are done:

63,2% of pupils reported they were doing it immediately after school,
27,1% of pupils go playing first, and do their homework afterwards,
9% of pupils do their school duties only in the evening, and
85% of parents believe that their children do their homework immediately after the return from school.

These answers are indicative when thinking about the level of developed working habits of pupils in the fourth grade, discipline, and feeling of responsibility for school duties, factor of forgetting and needs of children for play and rest, and many other factors contributing to the better educational achievement. It was noticed that the worst performance in the literacy test was with pupils who wrote their homework in the evening.
During their free time, pupils are included in additional and through a variety of out-of-school activities:

8,7% in music schools, 15,3% learn foreign languages, 28,7% is included in various sport activities, 4,5% are engaged in rhythmic dance 3% of pupils attend art workshops.

Help in learning and mastering teaching subjects by means of private instructors is offered to only 10,7% of pupils, of which is 5,5% in foreign languages and 2% in mathematics.

• Statistical computation of data showed that the tested pupils are absent from school primarily because of illness and the absence does not affect their school performance, and there is no connection between the number of absences and the learning achievement.

• Burdening of pupils can also influence the outcomes. Teachers gave an estimate of burdening imposed on their pupils. However, a unidirectional analysis of variance showed that there was no statistically significant difference in the achievement in the three tests applied with differently burdened pupils. 79,1% of teachers believe that the fourth grade pupils are quite burdened, 9,3% of teachers believe that pupils are very burdened, and only 11,6% of teachers think that pupils are not exposed to any special burdens and workloads.

School – the establishment and conditions of work

The learning achievement of pupils can be significantly influenced by external factors as well such as the size and organization of the school work, number of pupils in school and in the class, outfitting of the school, qualifications, gender and work experience of teachers, and the teachers' permanent improvement; especially the implementation of corresponding teaching methods and techniques for testing knowledge. Here are some words about the statistical indicators for each of these factors.

Out of 46 schools covered by this project, 51% are schools from towns, 28% from rural areas, and 21% from town suburbs. The noted tendency was that pupils from schools in rural areas had less success in the literacy test.

The number of pupils determines the size of the school and it ranges from 37 pupils at the least to 1555 pupils at the most. An average number of pupils per school are 694. The more detailed information are presented in the following table:

Organization of the school work depends on the number of pupils respectively classes. Thus, in 9 schools (19%) the school work is organized in one shift only, 35 schools work in two shifts (76%), and only 3 schools (4%) work in three shifts due to an excessively large number of pupils. In schools with two-shift work, which are the most numerous in the sample, pupils performed better in the mathematics test.

The number of pupils in a class varies from 5 at least to 33 at most. An average is 25 pupils per class. 75% of pupils stay in one the same classroom from grade 1 on.

Teachers

The required qualification of teachers is prescribed by the Law on Education and Primary Education. In the primary school, class teachers must have higher qualifications. This does not apply only to teachers who finished the secondary school for teachers (secondary level education) and who were full time employees at the moment the Law took effect. Given the work experience years respectively the age of teachers in the sample, even 17% of teachers have secondary level education, 77% have higher-level education, and 6% have academic qualification. Teachers were educated for 6 years in average, after the primary school education. So. The majority of them have higher-level qualification.

The assumed influence of the teachers' education level on the learning achievement was not confirmed. The applied unidirectional analysis of variance proves that pupils of teachers with different educational levels do not differ by achievement.

The teacher's profession is preferred better among women in our schools. In this sample, there are 87% of women-teachers and only 13% of men-teachers.

The age of teachers:

The work experience of teachers ranges from 1 year to 39 years of work. Teachers have, in average, 20 years of work experience. Only two teachers had periods of interruption in their work cycle. The statistical analysis showed that there was no connection between the work experience of teachers and achievements of pupils.

Monitoring and supervision of the professional work of teachers is an obligation of the school principal-school head, as well as Governmental officials acting as school comptrollers-counselors. The professional-pedagogic supervision is performed by inspecting the annual curriculum of the school, pedagogic documentation, and by monitoring directly the teaching process and other forms of the educational work. To the question how often the supervision was conducted of the teachers' work, the surveyed teachers reported as follows:

Professional improvement of teachers is their permanent obligation. It is maintained through professional actives in school and outside, seminars and professional meeting organized by the Ministry of Education and Sports, and other professional associations, as well as individually. As a rule, there are four to five professional actives a year in school, and as many on the district and national levels. As to estimates made by principals, in this school year 55% of teachers responded to three and 23% of teachers responded to four professional actives outside of school, which makes us conclude that the professional improvement of teachers' qualifications has been maintained and monitored regularly. Despite that, there are no statistically significant differences in the achievement of pupils due to teachers' more frequent response to professional actives.

School equipment and utilization of teaching tools and utensils

Accessibility to various teaching tools and equipment is possible to almost all interviewed teachers, except to the computer equipment. However, the frequency of use of the equipment is somewhat lower.

Everyday use of various teachers tools and additional equipment contributes to the quality of lessons and higher motivation level of pupils but the statistical analysis shows no connectivity between the learning achievements of pupils and the frequency of use of the accessible and available tools.

Teaching methods

The table below shows clearly which are the most frequently used teaching methods in classrooms covered by this survey. Teachers use everyday the conversation method, presentations and group teaching, and often intend to link contents from various teaching subjects. During the statistical computation we noticed a positive connectivity between the use of the differentiated lessons and achievements in the mathematics test, as well as connection of subjects with success in the life skills test.

Expectations of pupils – guidelines and landmarks

Assuming that teachers know their pupils well and can assess and judge what their expectations are in regard to school we come to the data which could be a guideline and landmark in the process of enhancing the educational work.

Pupils always expect to be commended and a fair relation with teacher, they are eager and enthusiastic about new knowledge, expect more from out-of-school and extracurricular activities and optional programs. Naturally, they expect to find some relaxation and recreation in school, and new friends. Democratization of the educational process foresees and rests on such changes and improvements respectively humanization of relations in school. Better communication and interaction between pupils and teachers surely contributes to better outcomes and results of work and common intentions and efforts in achieving a higher quality education.

Concluding considerations

The results of the conducted survey are of great importance and use in considering the current quality of educational achievement and a base for planning its development. On the base of experiences gained from this research it shall be possible to develop various models of systematic monitoring of results in all educational subsystems. Such monitoring models might ensure basic guidelines for creation of the education policy, and for change of curricula and methods of work. Introducing all factors of the educational process with results of the survey would raise awareness of the importance and role of each of them and the majority of defects and shortages could be targeted and solved. The influence of each of these factors on the quality of educational achievement could thus be used to the maximum respectively controlled and alleviated if producing negative effects. Therefore, the general assessment and conclusion is that such a way of monitoring is to be continued in the future, with certain modifications necessarily connected with our teaching contents, education system and its goal.