In Croatia, formal education isn't a legal requirement until a child is seven. Anne O'Connor visits one Croatian nursery to see how learning through play is integral to good practice
While on holiday in Croatia recently, I was lucky enough to be invited to visit a kindergarten in Zagreb. I can never resist the opportunity to see inside another nursery and, having visited kindergartens in Holland and Belgium, I am particularly interested in the European approach to early years.
Childcare and education
Pre-school education is an integral part of the educational system in Croatia, and includes children up to the end of their sixth year, when they enrol in primary school. The kindergarten also usually includes provision for nought to three-year-olds. There is no legal requirement for parents to send their children to school before the age of seven, although they are encouraged to make use of the kindergarten before the child becomes school age.
Compulsory schooling begins at age seven in the first grade of the primary school, and continues until the eighth grade at age 14. A class teacher teaches the first four years of primary school and the second stage is taught by subject teachers.
Secondary education, which is not compulsory, is generally a further four years. It includes grammar schools - which children can attend if they have gained sufficiently high marks in the seventh and eighth grades - and vocational and industrial schools, which provide practical experience and training in areas such as healthcare, commerce and catering, as well as general education. Some practitioners working in kindergartens will have gained their medical and healthcare qualifications at secondary school.
To gain a teaching qualification for both kindergarten and primary school, practitioners must have attended 'pedagogic academy' for four years followed by a year's internship. Salary is determined by qualification.
The school at Maksimir
The principal, Silvana Bagaric, and her staff at Maksimir, in the suburbs of Zagreb, close to Maksimir Park and Zoo and the new Dinamo Zagreb football stadium, welcomed me warmly. The area, like most in Zagreb, is socially mixed, and the school has been in existence since 1962.
There are 440 children attending, 80 of whom are under three. The building is large and airy, and set in its own grounds. The rooms are very well resourced - they are upgraded every five years - and the garden includes climbing frames, bikes and sand pits. The rooms on the first floor have their own outdoor terraces. The kindergarten is open all year round from 5.30 in the morning to 5.30 in the evening.
Staffing
There are 38 practitioners, two cooks, three dinner ladies, ten cleaners, two laundry workers, two caretakers, four administrators, a health worker, speech therapist, child psychologist and educational psychologist. Staff work a 40-hour week, of which 28.5 hours are spent directly with the children. The number of days' vacation is dependent on years of service. The children call all the staff 'Teta' (auntie) and then their first name.
Fees
Kindergartens are heavily funded by the municipality (local authority), although parents pay a regular fee of 400 Kunas (around 35 to 40) a month, which includes all meals. There is a discount if a family has three or more children in kindergarten at the same time. Parents can pay an extra 200 Kunas (15 to 20) a month for twice-weekly dance or language classes.
Organisation
There are 15 groups of three- to seven-year-olds (grouped vertically) and four for the under-threes. The maximum number for a group is 30, although most have fewer. Each class has two practitioners per group, and they will spend part of the day working together. The length of day for the children depends on their family circumstances.
After lunch, the children are encouraged to have a nap - little beds are set up in the rooms - although reluctant sleepers are allowed to play outside while the others sleep.
All the rooms include good-quality, child-size furniture, role-play and creative areas, book corners and a carpeted space. All the children use the outdoor space freely. There are some displays, but the walls are generally less adorned than those in UK nurseries or infant classes.
Curriculum
A curriculum document is drawn up every year by the school, and ratified by the local authority. It includes all the areas familiar to UK practitioners, together with a large section devoted to the health and physical development of the children. There is a strong emphasis on play.
The school is involved with an innovative programme called 'Step by Step', that aims to promote the rights of children and their families to a better quality of life, and focuses mainly on self-esteem and children's individuality.
Children who are causing concern are referred at an early stage for assessment, and inclusion is encouraged. The school is able to draw on the services of its own speech therapist and psychologist.
Language classes
Where Maksimir differs from other kindergartens is in the school's approach to language learning. Two of the groups are run bilingually in Croatian and Italian or Croatian and English. The practitioners in these groups use both languages in their interactions with the children, and use the second language for regular routines such as counting out the numbers of boys and girls or talking about the weather.
The children learn songs and listen to stories in both languages. The children in the English class sang for me a rousing rendition of 'Old Macdonald had a farm' and introduced themselves to me in English.
Their teacher, Marija Jukic, told me how she organised the room to promote play - and introduced aspects of literacy and numeracy learning to individual children only when it was relevant to them. There would be no whole-class literacy lessons for these children until they transferred to primary school at age seven.
Because there is such a positive attitude to European language learning in Croatia, parents are keen to pay the double fees required for their children to be taught in these groups, although the principal endeavours to keep numbers lower than in the other classes. The local primary school reports that the children from these classes do very well when they begin formal language learning at the age of seven.
There aren't any children in the school who do not speak Croatian as their first language, although if children were to arrive speaking only English or Italian, they would automatically be placed in the bilingual classes to support them.
A 'religious' class also exists to meet the needs of parents who particularly want their children to be exposed to Christian doctrine and teaching.
Good practice
On my visit, I saw lots of similarities with the good practice that exists in many nurseries and infant classes in the UK, and found that despite needing an interpreter, Silvana and I were both talking the same 'language' when it came to early years provision. But in our British climate of increasing urgency to formally train and test children, I couldn't help thinking how lucky they all were, to be allowed to work in this way and not lose their children to formal education until they were much older.