"There was no intention to embellish the reality of the Croatian education sector, quite the contrary, many of the presented data were actually very unfavourable, such as the number of study years and the number of students who fail to graduate," said Vilim Ribic, a senior union member and member of the Croatian negotiating team for the education sector.
Union members believe the Croatian statistical system is one of the major problems in Croatia because it is incomplete, undefined and unreliable, not only with regard to budgetary allocations for education, but also for the calculation of GDP, salaries, etc. They also warn that the statistics have to be adjusted to European standards.
Commenting on recent statements by a member of Croatia's negotiating team for education and science and education minister in the former coalition government, Gvozden Flego, that budgetary allocations for education and the number of lecturers were lower than stated at the talks in Brussels, the unionists said that Flego had probably mixed terms.
Flego probably overlooked the difference between the term public expenses and the term budgetary allocations, and between the term overall public financing and the financing of the central government from the state budget, Ribic said.
The former minister also made a mistake in his statement about the lower number of lecturers, because the number of lecturers should also include assistant lecturers and junior researchers who teach, because this is in line with European regulations, the unionists said.
Despite the fact that the stated data were not embellished, the unionists warned that the state was not setting aside sufficient funds for education. The EU average for science and higher education is 2.03 percent of GDP, while in Croatia 1.31 percent of GDP is set aside for that sector, they said.