The Role of Parents during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Croatia

Like many other areas, the educational system is challenging during the time of pandemic of the coronavirus. In the first half of the 2020 year, many schools had online lessons. The same situation was in Croatia, where we had online teaching from March to May in all elementary schools. Thus, the educational system started with fast-changing in terms of online teaching and learning methods. Distance learning has brought many families into specific situations because the help is normally provided to students by the teacher; in this situation, the parent had to do it. Because of that, parents were in a situation where they had to work online or “in vivo†and help their children learn new content. This was especially difficult for parents with a slightly lower level of education, parents who spent much time away from home at work, and especially for parents whose livelihoods called into question their lives, so in addition to organisational, some other socio-economic and emotional difficulties. Thus, this paper aims to research parents’ attitudes about distance learning and their role in these situations during the school year 2020/2021. As we expected, teachers wanted more cooperation with parents and parents wanted more understanding from teachers and not so many exercises in a short time.