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Education has long been recognized as the key to the survival - not only of the individual - but of society as a whole. A number of challenges emerged and one is required to master certain new knowledges and skills. The key role in training an individual to be able to readily tackle the challenges of the 21st century is one played by the education system, i.e. teachers. The importance and necessity of teacher training has been recognized in numerous European and Croatian documents and in recommendations based on various scientific research. The aims of this paper are to single out the key teachers' competencies and to analyse the learning outcomes of lifelong learning programmes that focus on acquisition of pedagogical competencies in the Republic of Croatia with both qualitative and quantitative research method. The conducted analysis showed that no programme with its compulsory part ensures the acquisition of the necessary key teachers' competencies but also seeks to provide them with the elective part of the programme. This means that acquisition of key pedagogical competencies is left to the volition of students who may or may not enrol in certain elective courses. The obtained results indicate there is a need to design and prescribe a single programme at the national level, one that would be certain to ensure that all the teachers acquire key pedagogical competencies through the completion of the programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]