This graduate thesis explores encounter of the child and the standard language at the beginning of education. The first part of the theoretical part of the paper provides a brief introduction to the topic and explains the concepts of language awareness, Croatian standard language, dialect, vertical multilingualism and language landscape and how they affect the child and his acquisition of standard language. The second part of the theoretical part deals with the child's encounter with education and the Croatian standard language. Furthermore, theoretical part of the thesis provides an overview of previous research in this field of study. The aim of the research is to determine what, according to the teachers, is the prior knowledge of children when they are starting school and how they react to learning a standard language. The research was conducted on a sample of sixty primary school teachers, and the results of the research show that teachers have a good knowledge of the acquisition of standard language and the problems that can be occur while teaching.