Zagreb - The Croatian Sabor on Friday amended the Law on Vocational Education and adopted the Law on the Recognition and Evaluation of Foreign Educational Qualifications.
The key change to the law on vocational education relates to the improvement of the quality assurance system in vocational education along with strengthening on-the-job training by connecting schools and employers.
The amendments also establish mechanisms and criteria for encouraging participants to select qualifications relevant to the labour market, improve the conditions for further development of Regional Competence Centers and ensure the quality of curricula related to the Croatian Qualifications Framework.
Novelties in the law include professional supervision over the implementation of on-the-job training with employers, and mentors for on-the-job training, and also defined are obligations and conditions that must be met.
The Law on Foreign Educational Qualifications distinguishes recognition from the evaluation of foreign qualifications.
Evaluation is applied with regard to enabling access to the labour market for professions that are not included in the List of Regulated Professions in Croatia, after which an opinion is issued regarding the appropriate level of educational qualifications.
In the future, the procedure for recognising the level of foreign educational qualifications will be carried out in only one step at the Agency for Science and Higher Education.
This entails automatic recognition of educational qualifications that have been externally evaluated by a member agency of the European Register for Quality Assurance in Higher Education or that derive from qualifications systems related to the European Qualifications Framework.
A procedure is also being introduced for the evaluation of foreign educational qualifications of persons under international and subsidiary protection, who cannot provide evidence of their acquired qualifications.