What next, the Slovak education system

The new Minister of Education is facing a formidable challenge - after years of liberalization of education to implement a comprehensive reform of the education system. The liberalization of education in the Slovak sense meant that the education has become a business, that parents know what is the best for their child. That we will set the system in such a way that it is good "to have a piece of paper in the field, which sounds good", therefore all of our students study “the management of everything”. So what if the employer as job creator does not have enough technically and natural science educated employees, does not have enough professional workforce. Our "system" somehow neglected it. We have to ask ourselves how we could allow that out of 60 thousand university students in 1989 now we have nearly 200 thousand. Out of which only in the field of humanities the number increased from 40 thousand to over 110 thousand. In the technical field out of 25 thousand only to 35 thousand!

How is it possible that in the declining number of the primary school students from 724 thousand in 1989 to 427 thousand in 2014 the number of teachers and schools has remained almost unchanged, contrary, yet the number of classrooms increased?! And I will not even talk about that today’s load of teachers, the number of teaching hours, as well as in the unchanged numbers of the teachers we have created hundreds of so called fictitious spreadsheet positions of assistants. I have nothing against the legitimate demands for teachers, for salary increases, but first, we must take a look at how many teachers our education system needs, and those, who will remain in the system, adequately compensate. Neither we can not forget the lifelong learning system, in such a way that they know what they have to teach, and whose needs they are teaching for.

Educational reform is not a matter of the Minister, but the entire society, including trade unions, county heads and Mayors. Everyone has to realize that the status of education is alarming. If Slovakia has ambition to be an attractive country for new investments and if we want investors who do business here to stay here with their investments, it is necessary to rebuild the entire education system to a Educational reform is not a matter for of the Minister, but the entire society.

I know what I'm talking about, since we have two private schools in Podbrezová - high school, and secondary vocational school. In 10 years, none of our graduates from the secondary vocational school ended up in the unemployment office. Every one of our students has the guarantee of having a job. Our teachers are adequately paid. I am proud that the dual system of education in Podbrezová is at world-leading level. For our needs we have prepared and are preparing professionals to help us keep the Železiarne Podbrezová among the leaders in its field.