Bosnia and Herzegovina

During the period of post-war recovery in Bosnia and Herzegovina, education is viewed as a very crucial component in the reconstruction and rehabilitation process. As a potential means of helping children and youth of different ethnic backgrounds to practice tolerance and understanding and of helping adults to reconcile their differences, communities to stabilize, and ethnic minorities to live safely with the dominant majority in each part of the country, education—and especially "civic education"—is seen as essential. International observers and Bosnian educators attuned to the need to foster a multiethnic society have expressed the belief that carefully planned and implemented educational programs may promote democratization and facilitate the reintegration and resettlement of refugees and the internally displaced. Moreover, educational programs are viewed not only as important for the children and youth of BiH but also for Bosnian adults, many of whom must retrain for new labor market conditions and a less-industrially based economy.

Few international data sources on population and education-related issues contain statistics for Bosnia in the post-1995 period, making an accurate depiction of the status of education in the country extremely challenging. Nonetheless, it was apparent at the turn of the new millennium that the status of BiH's schools remained quite poor, judging from the reports of a number of international donor agencies and organizations working with national and local authorities in BiH to reconstruct and reinvigorate the educational system. The World Bank, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, several UN agencies, international organizations like the International Foundation for Election Systems, and private donors such as the Soros Foundation have been instrumental in fostering educational reform and reconstruction in the country, providing a combination of funding and technical advisors to improve education in BiH. In 1996 BiH became a member of the World Bank (with membership retroactive to 1993) and the country began receiving massive amounts of international assistance to recover from the war. The 26 initial reconstruction grants given to BiH by the World Bank to catalyze the rebuilding of social infrastructure included grants for educational programming. Additionally, the European Training Foundation (ETF) of the European Commission dedicated significant resources and expertise to promoting improved vocational training in the country at both secondary and higher levels. As part of the assistance from ETF, a National Bosnian Observatory was established in Mostar in the FBH in 1999 with a branch office in Banja Luka, the capital of the RS. The Observatory was charged with the following tasks in collaboration with national education authorities and international "social partners": 1) to gather, analyze, and distribute information about vocational training, the labor market, and the implementation and assessment of education reform; 2) to serve as a contact point for national and international actors concerning information on vocational training and the labor market; 3) to conduct studies and prepare evaluation papers and policy reports pertaining to vocational training that could be used by the Bosnian authorities to develop and improve programming; 4) to assess developments in vocational training and the labor market; 5) to link up educational institutions with labor market institutions; and 6) to store data concerning social partners and institutions.

Free and compulsory education is provided by both Entities in BiH for all children between the ages of 7 and 15 or for the 8 years of primary schooling. By 2000 approximately 98 percent of adult males and 89 percent of adult females were considered literate. School enrollments at the primary level were estimated to be about 100 percent for both boys and girls; general enrollment statistics at the secondary level were not available.

Language of Instruction: Three versions of the Serbo-Croat language ("Serbian," "Croatian," and "Bosniac") are used in BiH's schools—essentially, variants of the same language that were developed in conjunction with the nationalistic campaigns that swept the country in the 1990s. Despite their differences, the three versions of Serbo-Croat are mutually comprehensible. The languages of instruction in specific geographical areas typify the ethnic composition of those areas, although according to BiH's new Constitution of 1995 all areas should provide educational opportunities to all minority groups. In 2001 both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets were in use in Bosnian schools, with both scripts legally mandated for all students to learn.

Unfortunately, during the post-war years, Bosnian schools often have failed to provide instruction in the home language of some of their students, a defect that hopefully will be addressed and at least partially corrected in the reforms taking place at the State, Entity, and Cantonal levels from the year 2000 on as the educational systems are harmonized into one cohesive system. Linguistic and cultural rights had not yet been clarified in the context of education at the turn of the millennium due to situations of ethnic dominance and the continuing nationalistic influence of dominant majorities throughout the country. Lluís Maria de Puig of Spain, education rapporteur for the Council of Europe's Committee on Culture and Education, studied the country's educational system through in-depth interviews with education specialists, government administrators, and international experts working in BiH and wrote in the Committee's March 2000 report, "Language, and more generally, education policies have become a vehicle for promoting 'national' separation. The political struggle within education manifests itself both in the context of 'national subjects'—history, language and literature and social studies—and in the desire for political control of the three separate education systems (created by the Serbs, Croats, and Bosniacs in the country)." Educational programs serving the needs of all children, including ethnic minorities, thus had not been fully or adequately developed by the year 2000. This is likely to change, though perhaps gradually, as national and international partners in education continue to work together to improve the Bosnian education system.