Education minister lets kids watch Croatia’s World Cup matches in school 

Luka Modrić

Croatia’s Minister of Education, Radovan Fuchs, has said that kids will be able to watch Croatia’s matches at the World Cup in Qatar on TV during school.

Minister Fuchs told RTL Danas that in schools students will also be able to watch matches when Croatia plays, if the majority in the school agrees. Hours that may be missed will have to be made up, the minister explained.

Croatia’s first match at the World Cup kicks off at 11:00am on Wednesday morning.

The decision has drawn some criticism with a number of people against it, but Zlatko Stić, headmaster of the Vladimir Prelog School of Natural Sciences in Zagreb, told N1 that he believes it is not an issue. 

“I would be a very happy participant in education in the Republic of Croatia if this was our biggest problem in Croatia. Now they are divided into left and right, I see the media doing polls, but I think it should have been left to the schools. Whoever wants to watch, let him watch, the programme is going on, we will make up for it as if someone had missed class for some other reason,” said Stić.

So far, it is known that one of the 1,300 schools has announced that they will finish classes early because of the match. 

Although he does not consider watching the match controversial, Stić says that it would be better to watch the match during class than to have students sitting in cafes.

“Philosophy, logic, sports, religious education, ethics… You can talk about it and watch the match. I would never send students out to go to cafes where people smoke and drink alcohol. Digital possibilities allow us to follow the match on the computer, we don’t have to have televisions in the classrooms.” concluded Stić.

Meanwhile, Croatian parliament will start working normally at 9:30 and then we will take a break from 11am to 3 pm to watch Croatia take on Morocco on Wednesday.