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Secondary Education

Upper secondary education is divided into:

• 4-year general education (gymnasia);
• 4-year vocational education (technical and other vocational schools);
• 4-year art education;
• 3-year vocational schools and completed profession schools
• schools for occupations which require lower education qualification;
• training.

In Upper secondary education occupations requiring lower and medium education qualification are divided into 33 fields of work (mechanical engineering, shipbuilding, metallurgy, economics and commerce, hotels and tourism, agriculture, health care, railway service, printing, etc.).

In Upper secondary education, the programmes for crafts occupations, which last for three years, are carried out in two ways:

• education within a unified system
  
• education within a dual system

Within the unified system, the students' practical work (50% of the syllabus) is, as a rule, realised in school workshops, and at the end of their studies, the students take a final exam. In the dual system, the teaching of general subjects, as well as vocational-theoretical subjects, is done in the school, and the students' practical work (65% of the syllabus) takes place in the workshops of the craftsmen licensed by the Chamber of Trades and Crafts.

At the end of their studies, the students take an apprenticeship exam (vocational-theoretical + practical part) and/or the final exam (general education + the apprenticeship exam). The launching of unified programmes for crafts occupations is currently taking place (19% general education, 21% vocational-theoretical, 60% practical work).

According to data from the CBS, in the school year 2003 there were 650 secondary schools and 49 students’ dormitories in the Republic of Croatia. It should be noted that the number of secondary schools is not the number of organisational units, but the number of educational units; in cases where there is one administration for a gymnasium, economics school and industrial school, they are in fact three schools.