Croatia
Interviews with teachers who participated in joint
staff-training event in Lithuania
Arsen Šarunić
• After a short stay in Lithuania, can you name some differences between
the Croatian and Lithuanian schools?
There are no big differences between Croatian and Lithuanian educational sys-
tem. As in our country, most of the schools are public, in some schools they
wear school uniforms, in others they don’t, some of them are elite schools with
lots of modern digital technologies, but most of them aren’t. The only difference
I noticed is that their headmasters have deputies, which is very useful and, in my
opinion, better for school organization needs. Also during school time, students
have one long break (half an hour) when they can go out of school to have lunch
at home or to do something else.
• Did you notice any new school management methods while exchanging
experiences with other colleagues in this project?
As I mentioned before, their headmasters have deputies who are responsible
for certain aspects of school leadership, for example EU projects, improving
educational quality etc.
That is a big benefit for improving school quality because it is impossible that
one person (headmaster) is the expert in all areas.
Arsen Šarunić (Croatian coordi-
nator) and Asta Jankauskienė
(Lithuanian coordinator)
• What is the importance of introducing new methods into the teaching
process? Why is it important that teachers recognize and implement edu-
cational innovations?
It is important because schools have to change because our students’ needs are
changing. We have to understand that new generations of pupils are completely
different, so called ‘digital generation’, with different brain structure, so we
must find new methods of teaching to help them to become good, hardworking
and happy people.
Arsen Šarunić