Consultant for Inclusive Education

The task of UNICEF in Croatia is to ensure that each child gets the support they need to reach their full potential. The goal of the five years’ partnership between the Government of the Republic of Croatia and UNICEF is to increase the quality of life for the most vulnerable children in Croatia. For more information on UNICEF Croatia programmes and impact, please visit our website at https://www.unicef.org/croatia/.

The Mandate of UNICEF in Croatia is to help the country advance child rights so that all children and adolescents can develop, reach their full potential and flourish. UNICEF does this by providing technical assistance, elevating partnerships, generating knowledge, facilitating intersectoral collaboration, innovating, strengthening systems, supporting in emergencies, and helping with disaster risk reduction.

UNICEF in Croatia is implementing the Country Programme Document (CPD) 2023-2027 and the Biannual Work Plan 2024-2025. The Country Programme Document is structured around the two main decades of a child’s life: the first decade (age 0 to 9) and the second decade (10-19 years of age). Inclusive education is part of both of those pillars, covering Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), primary and secondary education.

Inclusive education leads to better learning and social outcomes. It refers to a continuous process of creating conditions in which each learner – regardless of ability or social status – has equal opportunity to participate in education, to learn and to flourish. Inclusive education is built around the idea of the constantly changing and diverse needs of learners – both the individual needs of each learner and the needs of the entire learning group. Two main conditions are necessary for enabling inclusive processes in education: on the one hand, the system needs to be set up in ways that promote inclusion and on the other, the school leadership and teachers must have the pedagogic and didactic skills to help students flourish and grow.

The PISA results indicate that the Croatian education system is more equitable than many other education systems that participate in PISA. The equity of the Croatian education system is being challenged by the increased diversity of learners attending it. While many positive developments and investments towards inclusive education in Croatia have been recorded over the past two decades, particularly with the education of Roma, children with disabilities, and talented children, the social groups that still tend to have the most difficulties engaging with existing opportunities to learn and flourish in Croatian education are often children with Roma and migrant background. In other words: the system requires improvements to provide better learning opportunities for students who speak Croatian as an additional language.

The UNICEF Office in Croatia works with schools that have a high number of Roma students and with schools that have students with a migrant background enrolled – to look for solutions and examples of good practice so that they can be shared with other schools, and so that policies related to the education of Roma and migrant students can be improved.

How can you make a difference?

The Consultant Is Expected To Support The Education Part Of The Programme Supporting Protection And Integration Of Children And Families In Migration In Croatia, But Also To Contribute To Programmes Oriented At The Inclusion Of Roma Students And The Prevention Of Dropout. The Programme Involves:
 

• Determining the level of Croatian language competency of migrant students and students who speak Croatian as an additional language
• Supporting schools in the educational inclusion of migrant students by promoting lesson observation, mentoring, coaching and creating a culture of constructive feedback on educational practice among teachers
• Supporting schools in the social inclusion of migrant students and students who speak Croatian as an additional language by improving parental involvement and cultural sensitivity
   

The overall purpose of this consultancy is to support teachers and schools in the educational inclusion of students who are at a disadvantage, particularly those who are migrants and who speak Croatian as an additional language. The consultant will work with selected schools with a high number of migrant students and students who speak Croatian as an additional language, write up the learnings from the work with the selected schools to inform decision makers across the county on how to improve integration practices. The consultancy is bound to four regions in Croatia, centring around four major cities: Osijek, Zagreb, Rijeka, and Split. Depending on candidates’ interests and geographic availability, one candidate can be selected for all four regions or up to four candidates can be selected, each covering one area.