PUBLIC FUNDING OF RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS: CASE OF CROATIA

In addition to state owned schools, in most European countries there are also those founded by different religious communities (or religious schools). Such schools are commonly (co)financed from the public budgets, although there are significant variations between countries regarding the volume of this (co)financing. As most often there is a combination of public and private resources, some authors rather apply a ‘neutral’ approach by dividing them on government and non-government schools (depending on who owns and administers an institution, as well as who secures the greatest share of funds). Alongside explaining different strategies for (public) financing of the schools founded by religious communities, this paper also aims to illustrate and compare such schemes on the example of Croatia. The largest amounts of funds are allocated to schools established by the Catholic Church in Croatia (most commonly by dioceses), which is not surprising given that they represent the majority of religious schools. However, schools of other religious communities in Croatia also receive significant public funds. The analysis also showed that in comparison to Catholic schools one primary and four secondary schools whose founders are other religious communities employed on average a slightly larger number of employees, had on average a smaller number of students but were paid more from the state budget per student and per employee.