HAS SERBIA REACHED THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION OF EU COUNTRIES? MULTI-CRITERIA EVALUATION

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to analyse the position of the Republic of Serbia in relation to the performance of education in the countries of the European Union (EU), which was evaluated based on a multi-criteria analysis. For that purpose, the following criteria from the Eurostat database were used: Tertiary educational attainment (age group 25-34), Participation in early childhood education, Adult participation in learning, Share of individuals having at least basic digital skills and Early leavers from education and training. In the ranking of countries, the Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) was applied, while the weighting coefficients were calculated using the equal weighting method. Research shows that Serbia lags far behind EU countries in terms of the quality of education, so educational policy makers must improve that quality in the coming period, especially when it comes to the indicator – Participation in early childhood education. In addition, the hypothesis that highly developed countries (based on GDP per capita) have higher values of the composite index of education was confirmed. The best results are achieved by the countries of Northern Europe, so in improving the level of education, the practice of these countries must be followed and adopted by policy makers.