Informiranost, prepreke i iskustvo sudjelovanja u obrazovanju odraslih u Hrvatskoj: sociodemografske nejednakosti

Abstract

The paper contributes to the understanding of inequality in adult education in Croatia through the chain of response conceptual framework. Using data from the 2016 European Adult Education Survey, the paper investigates inequality in all stages of the process (disposition, search and access to information, perceived obstacles and experience) with regard to the socio-demographic factors established as related to the differences in access (age, gender, parental status, residence, education, income and employment status). Socio-demographic determinants turned out to be associated with inequalities in access to life-long learning across all links of the chain of response. Nevertheless, the strength and patterns of these associations differ. Inequalities in obtaining and actively seeking information about training are significantly greater than inequality in the declared need for training, especially with regards to the level of education and employment status. Notably, inequalities in receiving information cannot be understood fully through inequalities in the seeking behaviour. Inequalities are contributed to by the patterns of reach of information provided by employers and educational institutions, and by the limited counteraction of information from the Croatian Employment Service. Analysis of individual barriers gives expected results: costs are the most prominent challenge for those with lower income and the elderly, distance for the people from sparsely populated areas, family obligations for women, especially those with children, and health and age for the elderly. Overlap with work schedules is more likely to hinder the employed and those who have already attended education. A lower level of education is associated with dispositional barriers and inability to attend due to family obligations. Attended training courses are generally perceived as useful, without obvious segmentation in the quality of experiences and slightly more favourable outcomes for participants in the middle of the educational scale. The findings should be viewed in the context of the structure of opportunities in the Croatian adult education regime, which bound the actions of individuals. The results indicate desirable directions for improvement, such as intensification of targeted information outreach about existing opportunities, but also point to the importance of investment in more concrete educational opportunities and overcoming barriers.