ZAGREB, Dec 7, 2020 - Secondary schools in Zagreb will switch to online classes as of Monday, December 14, the head of the city department for education, Ivica Lovric, confirmed on Monday.

Partial results of a preliminary testing of students and teachers in 19 Zagreb schools were presented at a regular press conference of the City of Zagreb's civil protection team.

Slightly more than 2,000 Zagreb secondary school students were tested, and preliminary results show the presence of asymptomatic infection in 1% of primary school and 2.23% of secondary school students. As for school workers, 365 were tested, and 3.29% have an asymptomatic infection.

"This confirms that students are not mass carriers of COVID and that the virus is not spreading in classes and schools," Lovric said. "In 75% of Zagreb classes with COVID, only one student is positive, and in others two. We have concluded that it would be good to introduce Model C for all secondary school students as of December 14," he added.

Model C refers to distance learning.

"This will indicate how much that measure will contribute to curbing the spread of COVID," he said, noting that it would surely contribute to reducing crowds in public transport.

ZAGREB, Aug 19, 2020 - About 6,500 children in Zagreb will not be able to return to their own schools once the school year starts on September 7 because of the damage caused to school buildings by the March 22 earthquake, the Jutarnji List daily reported on Wednesday.

Damage caused by the quake was identified on 175 school and kindergarten buildings with 91 buildings being repaired to date.

Works are continuing on an additional 82 buildings and 69 of these should be ready for the new school year. Twelve schools, however -- five elementary and seven secondary schools -- were seriously damaged in the quake and are not safe for use hence students from those schools will have to be relocated to other schools which until now had lessons in only one shift.

Another school that was being reconstructed in any case brings the number of schools that will be relocated to thirteen.

Some elementary school pupils will have to attend schools in other suburbs and the city authorities have organised transport for 1,923 pupils, however, a decision has not been delivered on seating arrangements in school buses, considering the epidemiological situation, the Jutranji List reported.

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British International School in Zagreb hosted their now traditional "International Day", with the goal of raising money and other means, donated to the Emergency Operative Ward of the Surgery Clinic at the Sisters of Mercy Clinical Hospital in Zagreb.

The school announced it on their webpage, and Romina Peritz wrote about it for Jutarnji list. The event had an interesting format: the parents of the children who attend the school prepared the traditional delicacies from their countries of origin, which were then sold and all the funds were collected for the hospital. There were almost 20 countries represented at the food market organized at the school (the teachers' strike didn't affect the event!). The truly international nature of the school was shown: although all of the classes are held in English, the students (and their parents) have arrived to Zagreb from all over the world, from Russia, China, Italy, Middle East and others.

The British International School of Zagreb has started working in Zagreb in 2003, but their sister school, the elementary school Kreativan Razvoj (Creative Development) started in 1995. dr. Martin-Tino Časl, the founder and principal of the school explained that nobody gets asked where they're from in the school (in the negative sense), and the fact that the students arrive from all over the world is a gift for students attending the Cambridge program. There are quite a few Chinese students in the school, and more and more from Russia have been enrolling recently.

Croatian parents also participated in the event, preparing Croatian delicacies, but not just those: some of the South-American parents provided the recipes and spices, so Croatian parents were able to create Peruan and Venezuelan delicacies as well!

The International Day was held in the school in Šestine neighbourhood of Zagreb for the third year running, this year visited by the British Ambassador to Croatia, Andrew Dalgleish. A famous Croatian cellist Ana Rucner and her brother Marijo Rucner performed at the event, and it was a wonderful day for everyone who attended.

Alarming and widespread deficiency in financial literacy among the young has led to launching a new school subject and a new textbook.