National youth program

3.2. High school drop outs
Today in Croatia around 98% of children participate in compulsory elementary education, 
and the data on the participation of youth in high school education are insufficient and 
unreliable and range between 61.5 – 65%. Regarding academic education, the participation 
of young people is around 31.3% (Ilišin, Mendeš and Potočnik, 2003).
Among young people, especially adolescents, particularly worrying is the group of persons 
who do not attend or have not completed elementary or high school. Among young people 
up to 29 years of age, 16.5% of them have no qualifications (Ilišin, Mendeš and Potočnik, 
2003). This group is particularly vulnerable because it is exposed to the risks of poverty 
(restricted opportunities for employment, poorly paid jobs, frequent unemployed periods) 
and development of socially unacceptable behaviour.
We don’t know much about the reasons why young people fail to complete school or to 
enrol in high school in Croatia, and they do not receive enough attention. According to 

---

162
experiences and data from other countries, three groups of reasons may be identified: 
personal, institutional and socio-economic reasons. Personal reasons include poor school 
achievements, low academic and general self-respect and alienation from school and 
school life, whereby a student after a certain period of time simply abandons school or 
‘‘drops out’’ of the school system. Institutional reasons are school characteristics, school 
climate, discipline procedures and interaction between students and teachers, and 
academic programs. All of them contribute to such school experience that may reduce the 
possibility of a student’s success and gradually ‘‘push him/her out’’ of school. The third group 
of factors relates to poor socio-economic situation of some students’ families, who are not 
able to pay the costs of a child’s education or situations where it is necessary for a young 
person to become employed in order to care for the members of his/her primary family or 
his/her own children. In our country, especially in some regions such as islands and other 
remote areas, the reasons are often said to be expensive transportation to school and poor 
traffic connections. A portion of young people facing the difficulties of growing up does 
not receive enough support in school, family or local community in a way acceptable for 
them, so they give up further education because of the impression that no one cares for 
them or their education. We should point out that risks of dropping out of school are even 
greater for youth with developmental difficulties, especially with difficulties in learning and 
those with emotional or behavioural problems.
Consequently, it seems that the ones belonging to youth subgroups, which are in greater 
danger of leaving the school system early and remaining without professional qualifications, 
are those young people with poorer school achievements and other developmental 
difficulties, those of poor socioeconomic status, which particularly includes war-stricken 
areas with extremely low employment rates, those who do not have adequate family or 
institutional support, and young Roma. According to some data, only 5% of young Roma in 
Croatia attend high school (Denied a Future, 2003). However, the real reasons and causes, as 
well as risk subgroups are still to be discovered by noting adequate indicators.
We also should not ignore the possibility that dropping out of school may be a result of 
a widespread standpoint among youth according to which education is not sufficiently 
respected in society (43.4%) and that shifty, rich and politically apt ones achieve better 
success in society (47%), and that it is becoming more and more difficult to get a job one 
was educated for (55.8%) (Baranović, 2002).
In the efforts aimed at decreasing the consequences of this problem, there are significant 
programs directed to young people conducted by the Croatian Employment Institute that 
also provides vocational guidance of final classes of elementary and high school pupils, 
particularly pupils with developmental difficulties, chronic health conditions and other 
pupils who, for various reasons, have poor school achievements. The valid Decision of 
the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport, based on an opinion by the expert team for 
vocational guidance of the Croatian Employment Institute, enables these students to enrol 
more easily in the programs they find more appropriate to their recognized psychophysical 
abilities. This largely prevents dropping out due to difficulties or because the programs are 
not adapted to students’ abilities.
In addition, the Croatian Employment Institute participates in the implementation of the 
Literacy, Elementary Education and Professional Training program, through the project: 

---

163
‘‘For a Literate Croatia: The Way to a Desirable Future – the Decade of Literacy 2002 – 2013’’. 
The role of the Institute in this Program is to identify the unemployed young persons in the 
Institute’s register who dropped out of school and to include them in the elementary school 
program and professional training for the first profession, in order to increase the possibility 
of their easier integration into the world of work and to prevent further social exclusion. The 
Institute also conducts workshops directed towards improving competencies for active job 
search, in order to prevent long-term unemployment, thereby preventing social exclusion 
of youth.
However, a special problem represents the inadequate inclusion of social services and 
local communities in creation of mechanisms of social support to young people and their 
families aimed at persisting in education, informing and organizing accessible alternative, 
non-institutional forms of education and acquiring qualifications.
It should be emphasized that education is a constitutional and legal obligation and that as 
such it has to be accessible to every person, particularly children and youth who are socially 
excluded and unable to exercise their right without additional support.