Bosnia and Herzegovina

While several conflicting education systems existed in BiH in the year 2000 and a campaign was beginning among national educators and administrators and international partners to harmonize the systems, the following description of the levels of education provided in Bosnian schools generally applied to schools throughout the country in the year 2000.

From ages one to three, children may attend daycare centers that emphasize physical care. Children ages three to six or seven may attend kindergarten. "Special kindergartens" also exist for children ages three to seven (or nine). In the RS 41 public kindergartens and 2 private ones were in operation in the 1999-2000 school year, educating 5,987 children; with 772 kindergarten teachers in the RS, the pupil to teacher ratio was 7.76.

Compulsory schooling begins at age 7, when children begin primary school, and lasts for 8 years to age 15. Primary schooling is typically divided into 2 tiers: a first tier for ages 7 to 11, with children taught in classes, and a second tier for pupils ages 11 to 15, where subjects become the focus of educational arrangements. Special primary education is provided from ages 7 (or 9) to 15. Alongside the regular public schools where the full range of academic subjects are taught, parallel schools exist for teaching music and ballet at the primary level. All together, approximately 21,000 primary teachers provided education to pupils between the ages of 7 and 15 in BiH in the year 2000. During the 1999-2000 school year in the RS, 7,059 teachers in 196 public primary schools provided education to 124,305 pupils (60,418 in the lower-primary grades, grades 1 to 4, and 63,887 in the upper-primary grades, grades 5 to 8).