On September 26 and 27, 2024, our colleague Mihaela Bronić participated in the international conference „2nd CEE-LOC Conference 2024: Local Government Studies in Central and Eastern Europe” organized by the Institute of Economics, Zagreb and the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb.

She presented the paper „The efficiency of public primary education in Croatian cities”, co-authored by Branko Stanić and Simona Prijaković. The paper analyses the efficiency of public primary education in 36 Croatian cities from 2019 – 2022 with the Data Envelopment Analysis. The city budget expenditures for primary education per pupil were used as an input variable, and the number of city schools, students and classes, average grades for all students and average students per class were used as output variables. This method of measuring and defining efficiency indicates significant differences between cities in the efficiency of providing public primary education and considerable room for improvement. Approximately 90% of cities could improve the efficiency of public primary education services with the same current level of input. In cities where inefficiencies have been identified, national and local authorities and researchers should focus on further research and possible improvements, including using other methods and definitions of efficiency.

This paper was created as part of the Institute of Public Finance research project Efficiency of Public Services at Local Levels of Government – Definition, Measurement and Analysis (EJU), funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan 2021 – 2026.