On Thursday morning, school year ended for 490,618 primary school students and 214,664 secondary school students. For the first time, 58,173 first year pupils will also be able to show off their end-of-year grades. From Friday 1 July, schoolchildren will begin their summer holidays, returning to their desks on 5 September.
Minister of Education, Science, Research and Sport Branislav Grohling thanked all school staff for their work. He hopes that September will bring innovation and new inspiration to education. According to the minister, education staff can expect mentors to start working in 16 teacher support centres, bringing new impulses to teaching practice. According to Grohling, the Education Ministry is also working to allocate funds to compensate for higher energy prices for schools.
Teachers are a category of employees that needs significant help. Prime Minister Eduard Heger said this on Thursday after handing out end-of-year report cards to fifth-graders at one of Bratislava's primary schools. "We are negotiating very intensively with teachers' representatives, that is, trade unionists," he said, referring to teachers who are demanding higher salaries. The prime minister said he had spoken on the phone on Thursday with the chairman of the education union Pavel Ondek and they had agreed to hold further talks.
According to the Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, however, the state's efforts to create better conditions are still not a sufficient priority. Caputova thinks that teachers and school staff must be very tired today - affected by the pandemic, the constant changes and reorganisation of classes due to the quarantines, catching up after distance learning as well as with the integration of children fleeing the war into their classrooms and schools. Zuzana Caputova, also addressed the pupils, encouraging them that life is not based only on one report card.
Source: TASR
