Draxler: School Environment Is Place of Everyday Frustration

Bratislava, February 11 (TASR)- The school environment is a place of everyday frustration that could stem from bad planning, excessive red tape, incorrect relationships and pointless regulations, said Education, Science, Research and Sport Minister Juraj Draxler when addressing MPs at the special parliamentary session on the situation in education in Parliament on Thursday.

Draxler stressed the need to tidy up in the education sector because, as he’s learnt from pupils and their parents, practices from the era of socialism still persist at some schools.

The education sector doesn’t only need to improve the social status of teachers and change the system so that pupils don’t have to memorise so much. “It also needs systemic technical changes,” stated the minister.

Draxler informed MPs that his ministry is preparing a transition to standardised centralised admission tests to secondary schools and school-leaving exams of the same format. “We don’t need to test only pupils, as Slovakia so far hasn’t had a system for regularly checking the knowledge and abilities of teachers themselves. We have only a few mechanisms to find out what’s actually going on at schools,” said Draxler.  

The minister also spoke about the need to adjust the accreditation system at universities. He’d like to adjust the model of the internal management of universities.  

The Opposition has asked the minister what the Smer-SD party has been doing in the education sector over the past four years, claiming that the Government is coming up with what schools need only now, before the general election. At the same time it reminded MPs of scandals and overpriced national projects that mainly concerned the education sector.

Eight speakers applied for the debate on the situation in education, but they are being observed by only 20 of the total number of 150 MPs.