ZAGREB, June 26, 2019 - The Preporod school union on Wednesday sent an appeal to Prime Minister Andrej Plenković for the frontal application of the new "School for Life" programme to be postponed for one year after it had received numerous comments by union members expressing their doubts that teachers are prepared for the new education programme.
Union leader Željko Stipić told a press conference that it was essential to allow enough time to create the infrastructure and other conditions and for comprehensive implementation and intensive expert training for teachers.
"Over the past few months we have constantly been receiving enquiries, comments, ideas and complaints from teachers stating their dissatisfaction with the lack of quality training for the changes that the "School for Life" programme will bring in September," Stipić said.
Even though the Ministry of Science and Education (MZO) claims that everything is prepared for the new programme that is supposed to start this autumn, the question is whether schools are prepared and teachers trained, we don't know the answer to that, the unionist warned.
In an effort to provide teachers with an opportunity to give their opinion on the methodology and organisation of the new programme we will send all schools an appeal to sign, calling for a postponement of the frontal application of the "School for Life" for one year.
Signatures will be collected from Wednesday June 26 to Friday July 12 and the petitions consists of two points - the demand for infrastructure and other conditions to be established in Croatian schools and the demand for the implementation of a comprehensive and intensive training course for teachers, expert associates, principles and all those involved in implementing the programme in practice.
After that the signatures will be presented to Prime Minister Plenković "because he is the most responsible and most powerful person in the country and education reform is a priority political and national issue," and that will be a clear message of what he needs to do if he truly recognises the importance of changes to education.
The Ministry of Science and Education on Wednesday considered that the union demand was rather 'unusual', underscoring that the ministry is currently negotiating with two major unions regarding a wage increase as a result of the curriculum reform being introduced in all schools.
"We consider this to be a very unusual demand by a minor union considering that currently the ministry and two major unions are trying to negotiate higher wages through an increased wage index because of the curriculum reform being introduced in all schools", the ministry told Hina.
The ministry also recalled a survey conducted by the ministry which "shows that the evaluation is obviously very positive and that the needs of teachers and expert associates are being tended to."
The ministry further recalled that the CARNET system had organised on-line training sessions on how to successfully teach in an on-line environment which attracted the participation of more than 32,000 teachers.
In addition, support for teachers will be secured throughout the year and visits by advisers will be organised at least four time a year in every school so the point is, support and working together and not control, the ministry said.
More news about curricular reform can be found in the Lifestyle section.
