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The stabilisation of the political situation and the end of wearing fights with the neighbouring Turkish Empire had a very good effect on Stara Gradiška. More secure political and industrial conditions stimulated the development of the school system. As a result of better organised state welfare in this area, many new public schools were founded and the effects of culture and education, brought to this part of Slavonia by the Franciscans, started to show results.
In 1775 the Slavonian general command submitted a petition according to which the costs of schooling in the German language should be paid by the state. It was decided that each teacher was to receive a salary of eight forints and a special addition was tolerated, collected from students, or their parents. The development of the school system in Stara Gradiška depended greatly on social circumstances. The situation was probably more stable at times when the state took care of school costs and teachers' salaries. Stara Gradiška enjoyed the status of a community for forty years from 1745 to 1785. The privileged status of a free town that did not have to be afraid of taxes, had its drawbacks. The politics of that time established that the local authorities of each community had to provide the means required by schools and their teachers. The basic means must have been provided since the first public school appeared in Stara Gradiškajust at that time (1758). It was founded and financed as a result the efforts of the inhabitants of this fortified town and the very decision of its foundation was made at the meeting of the local authorities, the town magistrate.
The beginnings of the school system in Stara Gradiška are, therefore, somewhat different from those in other surrounding settlements where no such initiative was possible. After losing the privileges it enjoyed as a community, these differences disappeared and the school system of Stara Gradiška became equal to all the others. These forty years of relative school independence had, however, a positive effect on the inhabitants of Stara Gradiška and reminded them of the sianificance this town had had in times before the arrival of the Turks.
The first public school was situated in the settlement inside the walls. The foundation of the public school did not abolish the educational role of the Franciscans. According to records found in the Chronicle of Stara Gradiška parish,(46) the Franciscans had to read every military order and explain it to their congregation, the border guards, since the number of literate people was extremely low at that time.
The development of the school system in the eighteen century was also stimulated by Queen Maria Theresa's decree (47) issued in 1764. It stated that German schools had to be founded in the area of the Slavonian regiments and all the costs related to teaching and teachers were to be met by the state. Only one year later these schools started work and every regiment sent its best teachers to Vienna for training. Training in the capital of the empire was, however, an exception since professional training usually took place in the centres of the regimental district.
Due to military obligatiuns and very hard economic conditions, the work of the schools in Stara Gradiška was not stable nor certain. (48) Classes were frequently interrupted and students had to wait for more peaceful and happier times when the schools were re-established. There is no reliable information relating to specific periods of school activity, not even in the school chronicle which states that the school re-opened in 1810. Bartol Pavišić from Donji Varoš is mentioned as the first teacher from this period.
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