← Back to homePrva gimnazija Varaždin
Varaždin, Croatia · est. 1636 · State
Illustration · Varaždin
The oldest school in Varaždin: the gimnazija was founded by the Society of Jesus in 1636, and it has worked in its present building on Petra Preradovića street since 1870. Today it is a large four-year gimnazija - 736 pupils in 34 classes, 74 teachers and four specialists in its psychological and educational support service - with general, language and science-and-mathematics streams and one bilingual Croatian-English class, where eight subjects are taught in English, from history and geography to chemistry, biology, physics and computing. The school has run the Diploma Programme since April 2006: it occupies the third and fourth years, one class of up to 24 is admitted each year, in 2025/2026 it has 33 pupils, lessons are in English, and Croatian literature can be taken as the first language. There are 25 extracurricular activities, with around 430 taking part: a debating club, Theatron and LITRA, Book club, English news agency, a photo and video group, a 3D and Arduino workshop, KEMBIO lab, meteorology, geographic information systems, a volunteering club and the school sports society “Srednjoškolac”. The school prepares pupils for the German Language Diploma DSD I and DSD II - nine groups and 116 pupils - and sits them free of charge, and for the French DELF as well. The ordinary gimnazija is state-run, but the Diploma Programme is fee-paying: tuition and examination fees the school assigns to its contract with parents, and it names no amounts.
Key facts
Programmes
IB · DP · German language diploma · National programme
Languages of instruction
Croatian, English
Languages taught
German, French
About the fees The ordinary gimnazija is state-run and there is no tuition fee for it. The school acknowledges a fee for the Diploma Programme but names no amounts: the handbook for pupils and parents says that the contract with the school governs the “financijske obaveze roditelja prema Prvoj gimnaziji Varaždin (školarina, ispiti)”, and the school publishes no figures - not on the pages of the programme, not in the admissions announcement and not among its school documents. Separately the school warns that every resit is charged extra according to the IBO price list in force: “Svaki se ponovni izlazak na ispite dodatno naplaćuje prema važećem IBO cjeniku”. The German Language Diploma DSD I and DSD II examinations are free for the school's own pupils.
Admissions Entry to the Diploma Programme comes after the second year of upper secondary school or an equivalent level in another system: the school expects marks of no less than “very good (4)” in the mother tongue, English, mathematics and the relevant science subjects over the first two years. A written entrance examination is set for those whose marks in these subjects are lower, who have studied abroad, or who ask for a higher level science subject without the corresponding mark; the language check, as the school puts it, is usually advisory rather than disqualifying. The interview is called compulsory for everyone in the admissions policy: “Interview is mandatory for all applicants”. One class is admitted: “Each year we enrol one class of up to 24 students into the first year of the programme”. The summer application window is 1 to 3 July 2026; an autumn one at the end of August is announced only when places are left. Entry to the ordinary gimnazija goes through the national e-upis system, and the school publishes its selection rules as a separate document.
Stages and year groups Grades 1-4, 34 classes. Four years of the Croatian gimnazija in three streams: general, language, and science and mathematics with variants A, B and C. One general gimnazija class in each intake is bilingual, Croatian and English. The Diploma Programme occupies the third and fourth years, and in 2025/2026 it has 33 pupils - 19 in the third year and 14 in the fourth. There are 34 classes in all, and the school gives the number of its pupils as two different figures: 736 in the school curriculum for 2025/2026 and 747 in the principal's address.
Address Petra Preradovića 14, 42000 Varaždin
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
IB · DP · authorised programmeschool is in an official registryconfirmed by a school document, by membership or by taking part in a networkclaimed by the school, no confirmation, not counted in the scoreGuide to all organisations → What stands behind each entry
IBInternational Baccalaureate
A Swiss non-profit, working since 1968. Its programmes are among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Authorisation is granted stage by stage, so a school with the final stage does not necessarily run the younger ones; which stages this school holds is set out in the line below.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run this programme and to award its certificate. This is a confirmation of the programme, not a judgement on the school as a whole. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. At this school: DP (ages 16-19). DP is the final stage, ages 16 to 19: six subjects plus a compulsory core of theory of knowledge, an extended essay and CAS. The diploma is accepted by universities all over the world, and in a number of countries it counts for admission on the same footing as the local leaving certificate.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →German language diploma
The Deutsches Sprachdiplom, the German language diploma. The federal agency ZfA grants a school the right to prepare pupils for this examination and to sit it; the conference of state education ministers oversees the work, and Germany signs the diploma. There are two levels: DSD I is B1, DSD II is C1, and the latter admits a holder to a German university without a further language examination.
What this means for this school. This is the right to run one language examination, not a school programme: the other subjects follow the national curriculum of the school's own country, and no inspection of the school as a whole stands behind the DSD. It does not lead to a German leaving certificate; that is awarded only by recognised German schools abroad, which hold a different recognition from the same agency.
National programme
The state school programme of the country the school stands in: it is set by that country's ministry of education, which also licenses the school and awards the leaving certificate. That certificate is used for entry to local universities, and abroad it is matched to the local one.
What this means for this school. This entry does not count towards the score, and that is deliberate. Every lawful school in a country works to the national programme, so on its own it tells one school apart from no other - unlike the French, German or Russian programmes, which are carried abroad and confirmed by the register of their organisation. We show it because a parent needs to know what programme their child is taught and what certificate the child will get. Counting it would lift the whole ranking at once and still tell nobody apart.
Exams and destinations from the school's official website
Exam results The school publishes no figures for the results of the Diploma Programme: in the principal's address it says of them only that they are at the world average or above it. The state matura of 2024/2025 was taken by 166 leavers; three did not pass, all three in mathematics A, and after the summer session 163 had passed. The average mark of the leaving year was 4.60 against 4.55 the year before; the school calls the pass rate complete, and puts its matura results above the national average and appreciably above the county average. The school also prints the average marks of its Diploma Programme classes - 4.47 in the third year and 4.50 in the fourth - but those are school marks, not diploma points.
Where leavers go: Pravni fakultet u Zagrebu · Fakultet elektrotehnike i računarstva u Zagrebu · Ekonomski fakultet u Zagrebu · Prirodoslovno-matematički fakultet u Zagrebu · Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu · Farmaceutsko-biokemijski fakultet u Zagrebu · Medicinski fakultet u Zagrebu · Fakultet strojarstva i brodogradnje u Zagrebu · Arhitektonski fakultet u Zagrebu · Građevinski fakultet u Zagrebu · Medicinski fakultet u Rijeci · Pravni fakultet u Rijeci
and others, 17 universities in the school's list in allWhere the 2024/2025 leavers went the school sets out faculty by faculty, with numbers: most to the Faculty of Law in Zagreb - 22 people - 13 to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, 11 to the Faculty of Economics, ten each to the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, ten to the School of Medicine in Rijeka, seven to eight to the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, four to the School of Medicine in Zagreb. The list runs to more than forty programmes, from architecture and civil engineering to University North in Varaždin itself and the Universities of Split and Zadar. The school does not work out the shares of those admitted, and it has no separate list of universities for the leavers of the Diploma Programme.
Facilities from the school's official website
·Swimming poolnot stated on the website
·Sports hallnot stated on the website
✓LaboratoriesPhysics and microbiology practical rooms, the KEMBIO lab for biosafety and biosecurity, a 3D and Arduino workshop, an artificial intelligence laboratory, computer rooms
·Theatre or assembly hallnot stated on the website
✓LibraryA library of 121 square metres on the first floor: 24,468 volumes, 7,732 of them in a protected collection, 12 periodical titles and 537 audiovisual and electronic items; 46 reading places, nine computers for pupils, five tablets, two e-readers and seventeen computers with network access
·Cateringnot stated on the website
·School transportnot stated on the website
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Campus: An 1870 building at Petra Preradovića 14 in the centre of Varaždin, with an old and a new wing; the façade of the old wing has been restored. Thirty-four teaching classes. The school names no sports hall, canteen or grounds.
Clubs and activities (25): LITRA i Theatron · Debatni klub - debating · Glazbena radionica - music workshop · Book club · English news agency · Jugend debattiert - German debating · Govorimo francuski - French conversation · Foto i video grupa - photo and video · Hrvatsko otvoreno natjecanje iz informatike - the Croatian open informatics competition · 3D i Arduino praktikum - 3D printing and Arduino · KEMBIO lab · Geografski informacijski sustav - geographic information systems · Meteorologija - meteorology · Primijenjena geografija i 3D dizajn - applied geography and 3D design · Prošlost za budućnost - history for the future · Volonterski klub - volunteering · EPAS - European Parliament Ambassador School · Školsko sportsko društvo “Srednjoškolac” - school sports society · Želim znati više - Croatian, an extension course · Želim znati više - English, an extension course · Želim znati više - physics, an extension course · Želim znati više - biology, an extension course
Summer programme away from campus: Multi-day trips and school excursions: for the third years, from 29 June to 3 July 2026; the school chooses the agencies by open tender and puts the offers to the parents. Erasmus+ mobilities have run since 2015, with partners in Finland, Spain, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Romania, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Serbia and Slovenia; the KA121 accreditation runs to August 2027.. The school runs no camp of its own on campus
Teaching staff from the school's official website
·Teachers listed by namenot published
·Teacher qualificationsnot stated
✓Number of teachers74
·Students per teacher or class sizenot stated
The staff is listed by name, subject by subject, from the Croatian language to religious education; for the Diploma Programme the school separately names 17 teachers with the subjects assigned to them. The principal's address gives 74 teachers, four specialists in the psychological and educational support service, five administrative and accounting staff and thirteen technical staff. The school does not state qualifications, length of service or the ratio of pupils to a teacher.
Safety and wellbeing from the school's official website
·CCTVnot stated on the website
·Security staffnot stated on the website
·Access controlnot stated on the website
·Nurse or medical roomnot stated on the website
✓CounsellorThe school psychologist Željka Pačalat and the school pedagogue Renata Čelik, both with their consultation hours, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses
✓Child protection policyA protocol on how to act in a case of sexual violence, adopted on 1 August 2018
·Staff trainingnot stated on the website
·Anti-bullying policynot stated on the website
The school names no general child protection policy, no staff training, no security service and no medical room.
Reviews
No reviews yet. The community rating counts towards the score once a school has five verified reviews - until then we do not show a zero, so as not to mislead.
Criteria breakdown criterion weight in brackets
Academics and programmes (16%)82 Community rating (16%)no dataparent reviews are needed: the criterion switches on at the fifth verified one Exams and destinations (12%) scored on disclosed data80 Safety and wellbeing (12%) scored on disclosed data65 Accreditation and verifiability (10%)85 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data70 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data70 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data78 Value for money (6%) scored at the median70 "Scored on disclosed data" stands where we count only what the school has written about itself on its own site: exams and destinations, safety and wellbeing, teaching staff, facilities, clubs and activities. A low score here means the school does not write about this, not that the school does not have it: a school with good security and a sparse site will score low. A school can fill in its profile, and the score will be counted again.
The score is counted from 7 of the 9 criteria.Only those with checkable data count: programmes and accreditations from official registers, the fee from a published price list. Where it says "scored on the median", the school has no data and the middle of the list is put in its place, so that a gap gives no advantage. Admissions, teaching staff and reviews come in as their data arrives.
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