In 2011 mandatory English classes for students from the third grade were introduced. Now the Education Ministry plans to cancel them. "We're learning that English lessons, particularly in lower grades, are not being taught by qualified teachers but rather by high school graduates," said Minister Dušan Čaplovič who is not known as a keen English speaker himself.
He adds parents should decide on one foreign language their children should learn, with the grade when the language classes start still open for debate. He also says a second foreign language for older students should not be an academic requirement either, arguing that it’s better to master one well than two at very bad level.
But experts such as Anna Butasova, Associate Professor at Comenius University's Pedagogical Faculty disagrees with the Education Minister. “Changing the concept of foreign language teaching with every new government is reprehensible. We haven't checked children for how much they know and who's teaching them. We're manipulating the statistics on teacher readiness," Butasova said, quoted by the press agency TASR. Recent surveys point to the fact almost half of Slovaks under the age of 34 are willing to move abroad for work or study and employers requiring the knowledge of at least one foreign language are the rule not the exception in Slovakia. Butasova has concluded that many parents will send their children to private language lessons anyway, which means cutting from their kids’ spare time.
