The findings of the analysis were presented at the National Centre for External Evaluation of Education in Zagreb.
A total of 25,756 students took the final exam, with each student selecting an average of four subjects. The Centre ranked the success rates compared to the national average in the 2023/2024 school year, grouping results according to the founders of schools - counties and the City of Zagreb.
The passing thresholds for exams were as follows: mathematics, physics, and chemistry at 25%; biology at 27%; informatics at 28%; history and geography at 30%; government and economics at 31.5%; basic-level German at 32%; Croatian and higher-level German at 35%; higher-level English at 36%; and basic-level English at 37%.
In a total of 27 categories, Međimurje County led in 14, the City of Zagreb in five, and Karlovac County in three.
"Schools cannot be viewed separately from other spheres of social life, and these results do not surprise me," said the director of the National Centre for External Evaluation of Education, Vinko Filipović, in response to journalists' questions about the results in the context of regional development.
"We had access to these results before as well, but we didn't make them public - instead, we shared them with the school founders," Filipović said. He added that Vukovar-Srijem County's performance in chemistry and Dubrovnik-Neretva County’s results in mathematics were pleasant surprises, while the dominance of Zagreb schools has been somewhat challenged.
In ten categories - Croatian language (general), mathematics, and English language (both basic and higher levels), as well as physics, biology, government and economics, and chemistry - Lika-Senj County appeared among the bottom three in seven instances. Sisak-Moslavina County followed with five appearances, Bjelovar-Bilogora with four, Vukovar-Srijem with three, Brod-Posavina and Požega-Slavonia counties with two each, and Zagreb, Virovitica-Podravina, and Šibenik-Knin counties with one each.
The Centre published the passing thresholds for the first time eight months before the school-leaving exams, thereby addressing complaints about previous years when the criteria were announced just one day before the exams, Filipović said.