CARNET, an institution operating within the Science and Education Ministry in the field of information and communication technology and its application in education, has won the European "Regiostars" award for the introduction of fast Internet and computers in 10% of primary and secondary schools.

The REGIOSTARS Awards are a yearly competition, organised by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy, and have been bestowed on winners in several categories since 2004.

This year, Croatia’s Croatian Academic and Research Network whose acronym is CARNET, won the award in the skills and education category. Apart from CARNET, four more projects had been nominated from France, Poland/Russia, Italy and Sweden/Finland.

The winners of the awards were announced on Wednesday.

Purpose of CARNET’s e-school project was to improve digital maturity of schools and digital competences of teachers and students, focusing on 10% of all Croatian schools.

The project “piloted organizational, technological and educational concepts of introducing ICT in the education and administrative processes.”

“The current shift to remote learning, although challenging, was significantly mitigated by the core project results, helping some 50.000 teachers and 500.000 students switch to a new level of education,” according to the information available on the website the REGIOSTARS Awards 2020 online submission platform.

From 2015 to 2018, 150 schools, that make up 10% of all schools in Croatia, were provided with at least one IT classroom with access to the fast Internet they need.

The procurement of the equipment and the organisation of training was covered with €34 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and from the European Social Fund (ESC). The remaining six million was ensured from the Croatian state budget.