Divjak and Fuchs Acknowledged that the Experimental Introduction of the Curriculum Reform is Indeed an Experiment

Minister of Science and Education Blaženka Divjak and special advisor to the Prime Minister for coordinating the work of the Expert Working Group (ERS) for the implementation of the curriculum reform Radovan Fuchs stated on Tuesday that the experimental introduction of the curriculum reform in schools is indeed an experiment, important for its frontal implementation.

Members of the ERS gathered on Tuesday at the Ministry of Science and Education (MZO) for the constitutive session, which was also attended by the Prime Minister’s special advisor Fuchs and Minister Divjak. After the first part of the session, Divjak and Fuchs gave statements to journalists in the MZO lobby and answered several of their questions.

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Divjak: We have chosen a really good and professional Expert Group

Minister Divjak assessed that the Special Expert Committee (PSP) for the implementation of the Strategy for Education, Science and Technology has chosen a really good Expert Working Group consisting of experts who, it is believed, “agree much more easily than many politicians.” In that sense, she added, the atmosphere during the presentation at the introductory part of the meeting was good.

She stated that the Ministry will provide full support to the work of the ERS – an online environment, a place where the ERS will work, and this will, the minister emphasized, of course be the Info Center for the curriculum reform “School for Life” opened on Monday in Berislavićeva Street in Zagreb.

Divjak reported that during the course of the meeting, discussions were held about the tasks of the ERS. “Of course, at the beginning, adjustments will be necessary because the Ministry has already ‘stepped’ far into the implementation of the experimental implementation based on reform processes, but we will ensure that all ERS members ‘catch’ the pace and participate in all processes, especially when we ‘enter’ schools with the experimental phase,” she said.

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The minister emphasized that the work of the ERS will be organized and aligned with the Strategy for Education, Science and Technology and the Action Plan, which she believes will soon be adopted by the PSP.

Fuchs: ERS members are experts, a proposal for a revised Action Plan possible by the end of the week

The Prime Minister’s special advisor announced that “in accordance with promises, the pace will be accelerated, existing obstacles in the adoption of various documents will be removed in the sense that one document ‘waits’ for another.”

Ultimately, Fuchs said, this is the first meeting of the ERS in full composition after almost a year. He added that all members are very enthusiastic, so he believes that the work will go very well.

Fuchs believes that a proposal for a revised Action Plan could be completed by the end of this week, which could then, he added, be adopted by the PSP next week, then by the Government, and then sent to the Committee for Education, Science and Culture of the Croatian Parliament. Thus, he added, “we have also initiated that delay in the adoption of the document, but we will not wait for the revised Action Plan to ‘pass’ through the parliamentary committee.”

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As he explained, there will be no waiting because the first task that the ERS needs to accomplish will certainly not be changed in the Action Plan – and that is the revision of the methodology of the curriculum approach in three segments, which the entire ERS will now deal with. All previous documentation will be available to ERS members, they will be able to consult all other available documents, and they will work and comment on everything online, he said.

The process cannot be completed in a week or ten days, the public will be informed about everything

“Do not expect that this process will be completed in a week or ten days, perhaps we will manage to complete this quite extensive work in a month, but I can promise that the public will be informed about everything,” Fuchs said.

Moreover, he added, “I proposed and we agreed that the minister and I will no longer appear, and after each ERS meeting, one reporter will be appointed who will inform the public about what was discussed at the meeting.”

Journalists were also interested in whether there are deadlines that the ERS must adhere to. In this regard, Fuchs reminded that there are deadlines in the Action Plan with which we are, he added, “so far OK.” When asked when the reform will ‘come to life’, Fuchs replied that he cannot say when that will be, and he believes that the minister cannot answer that question either, emphasizing that it cannot be said that it will be on such and such a date, but it can be said that everyone will do everything to make it happen as soon as possible.

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Minister Divjak noted that there are some phases of the implementation of the education reform that are already clear. She reiterated that this is primarily what is currently being done, and that is that the experimental phase of the implementation of the curriculum reform begins in the fall, which will also be an integral part of the national reform plan of the Government, and that deadline is fixed and set. As she said, there will also be work on the revision of what will be experimented in schools, and in that part, the ERS will certainly have a key advisory role, although, she explained, in accordance with the Strategy and Action Plan, the ERS is not responsible for measures, but it is responsible for the implementation of all those measures, which should be fully utilized because the members of the ERS are experts.

Fuchs added that the experimental phase would not be necessary if there were certainty that everything was one hundred percent good. He explained that this experimental phase is necessary to ‘extract’ certain conclusions, both negative and positive, so that what may be negative can be changed and improved, while what is good remains, and all effects will be carefully monitored.

In response to a journalist’s question whether the school year 2019/2020 is actually the deadline for the reform to be introduced in schools, Minister Divjak answered positively, but also explained that the experimental phase must be monitored very closely. “The idea of the experimental phase is not to say that everything was excellent, but the idea is to monitor that phase and to intervene and experiment all the time, and that enables that when entering all schools frontally, it is prepared so that all observed negatives are corrected, and good practices are applied in as many schools as possible,” she said. She reminded that in all experimental schools there will not be the same organizational elements, nor will the ways of working be fully replicated, but it will be done in such a way that the greatest emphasis is placed on the autonomy of the school and the teachers.

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Therefore, Divjak emphasized, this preparation phase is important in which 2,600 teachers, associates, principals, and 170 mentors participate, and so far 11 international advisors, and there may be more who help “teachers, who have very good basic education, to enter the classroom confidently.”

What does the revision of the methodology of the curriculum approach mean?

Journalists were also interested in what exactly the “revision of the methodology of the curriculum approach” means, and Fuchs replied that it means that the curriculum documents have been prepared, but they have not undergone detailed public discussion and need to be revised, which is also provided for in the Action Plan. The minister reminded that the documents have undergone one public discussion that has been processed, and explained to journalists that it is not about the revision of the curriculum but about the methodological approach that allows comments from the discussion to be further refined and commented on. “The confidence that we are on the right track is also given by the report of the European Commission, which particularly recognizes the importance of the applied methodology,” she said. However, she added, it is clear that there are also certain comments and that a revision is needed to finalize the reform.

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Divjak and Fuchs concluded that it is important to say that the mentioned revision of the methodology of the curriculum approach has nothing to do with the beginning of the experimental implementation in the fall.

Divjak considers Stipić’s statement extremely unusual

One of the independent questions on the topic was the minister’s stance on the statement by the president of the Union of Employees in Croatian Education “Preporod” Željko Stipić, who at a press conference on Tuesday stated that “the proposed Branch Collective Agreement for secondary schools has not achieved the union goals and expectations of employees and that the Minister of Science and Education Blaženka Divjak, ‘as the command responsible for collective negotiations’, cannot receive a passing grade for that.”

The minister responded that this is for her “an extremely unusual statement” and that she is surprised because negotiations were conducted in good faith and “two branch agreements for primary and secondary education were very well negotiated” which were initialed last week by the majority unions.

“I would not get into the relations between minority and majority unions,” concluded Minister Blaženka Divjak.