6% of GDP into education?

Teachers' organisations request a 25% increase in the salaries of pedagogical and expert employees. Education Minister Juraj Draxler agrees that teachers' salaries should be increased and the future government manifesto should guarantee this. Nevertheless, many of the demands of the myriad of organisations active in the education sphere are unrealistic, he said at a press conference on Thursday. According to a joint declaration issued on Wednesday, teachers' salaries should be increased in order to reach at least 80 percent of the salaries received by other people with university education by the end of 2020. This should entail raising teachers' salaries by 25 percent as of next year and by another 10 percent in each of the following years. Also, the salaries of beginning university lecturers should reach at least 1.7 times the average salary in Slovakia. Minister Juraj Draxler, however, thinks that, "The declaration has many misty points, but we concur on many issues". Meanwhile, there's an agreement on increasing the salaries of non-teaching staff and boosting the funding of universities. The declaration demands the funding of public universities be increased by as much as €60 million each year. Juraj Draxler further confirmed that it's necessary to transfer powers in running and funding public schools to the education ministry, as demanded by the aforementioned organisations. "The OECD has also called for such a step", said the Slovak Education Minister, adding that this certainly should be debated after the March 5 general elections. Nevertheless, Draxler didn't like the proposal to pour at least 6 percent of GDP into education by the end of the next electoral term (2020). "It's too much above the EU average. Eurostat's statistics state that the average is 5 percent of GDP", he said, adding that many opposition parties have far more realistic notions of funding education than these organisations.