Gröhling wants to move education to the 21st century – SME.sk

BRATISLAVA. From Thursday, there is a reform school leap, the goal is to move education to the 21st century. This was stated by the Minister of Education during Thursday’s press conference Branislav Gröhling (SaS) with the fact that the basis of changes in education are three main laws approved by the National Council.

Reform months

These are amendments to the Education Act, the Act on Pedagogical and Professional Employees and the Act on Vocational Education and Training.

Thanks to the amendments to the laws, it will be possible to change the content of education, significantly digitize education, support inclusive education or improve the quality of teacher education.

The amendments to the three laws provide a framework for reforms in education. The Minister of Education stated that there are about a hundred changes in total.

“We are facing the biggest reform months in education. We will put them into practice through changes in the curriculum, which are already being worked on by more than 300 teachers and professionals, through better teacher education or through investments and reform plans from the recovery plan. We are already implementing many visible adjustments. “We will be the next one gradually,” said the head of the education department.

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The main goal of the reform of the content of education is to ensure that everything that children learn in schools can be used in practice. According to the head of the Ministry of Education, the curriculum will be adapted today and the excessive memorization of lessons will be eliminated.

The focus will be on the development of pupils’ skills, critical thinking, digital, environmental or financial literacy.

Another change is the quality of teacher education.

“Quality teacher education was very often done by non-governmental organizations together with teachers from practice, so in the law we also allow education for non-state providers,” the minister adds. According to Gröhling, teacher training will no longer be officials, but teachers from practice. In this context, 40 regional centers are to be established, two of which have already been established.

Catalog of innovations

Further changes will take place in the area of ​​support for innovation and modernization of teaching. New ways of learning, best practices and approaches to modern teaching in the form of a “catalog of innovations” will be gathered in one place.

Schools will be able to automatically introduce these approaches into their teaching without further approval.

A new position of school digital coordinator has also been created, which is in charge of educating teachers and students in the use of digital technologies and their introduction into teaching. This position is already being piloted in schools and 414 schools have shown interest in it.

The changes will also affect the systemic support of pupils with disabilities. Laws define the concept of inclusive education. Thanks to the reform of the counseling system, according to the Minister of Education, students will have more accessible care and professional counseling.

They will not cancel their graduation this year

The school-leaving examination will take place this school year and will not be canceled. This was stated by the Minister of Education during the press conference.

“We will look at the content of individual exams, we will look at how the commissions will be set up,” said the head of the education department. In the current situation, when a certain percentage of pupils and teachers have already been vaccinated, the school-leaving examination will be, according to the Minister of Education.

In connection with the abolition of the graduation exam 2022, a petition has already been filed, under which more than 16,200 people are currently signed.

The signatories of the petition claim that the possibility of graduation in the form of an average of marks for the past four years of study is possible. They also point out that they lack a lot of knowledge. According to the signatories of the petition, it is already too late for any reduction of the curriculum or its catching-up.

Gröhling wants higher salaries for teachers

Gröhling believes that he will achieve a positive result in the coming weeks in connection with the increase in teachers’ salaries.

The head of the department wants an increase in teachers’ salaries. “It’s hard for me to tell if it will be or not,” said the head of the education department. As he added, it does not depend only on him. In this context, it negotiates not only with the Minister of Finance Igor Matovic, but also with the Prime Minister Eduard Heger.

Dissatisfaction with the fact that the draft budget for 2022 did not provide for an increase in teachers’ salaries, expressed, for example, the Trade Union of Education and Science Workers in Slovakia, but also the Slovak Chamber of Teachers.