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Mikolaj Defends Proposal on Life-long Education in Committee
Thursday 19 November 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, November 19 (TASR) - Education Minister Jan Mikolaj (Slovak National Party/SNS) defended the Government's legislative proposal designed to increase access to life-long education in the parliamentary Education Committee on Thursday.
The proposal was pushed forward to the second reading in Parliament in October, but Opposition MPs criticised various aspects of the legislation. Chairman of the committee Tatiana Rosova (SDKU-DS), for example, called for the proposal to be withdrawn and reworked, but none of the opposition proposals passed in the committee in the end.
"The aim is to create a system (for life-long education)," stressed Mikolaj, who wants this to represent the finishing touch to education reform. He wants to improve the quality of the further education and increase the number of people, who study. According to him, the percentage of Slovaks who are included in life-long education is low compared to other EU countries. Furthermore, the legislation should increase the possibilities to acquire an overall or partial qualification via further education.
"The law is necessary, but I have the feeling after studying the proposal that the ministry wasn't able to back this legislation up sufficiently," said ethnic-Hungarian SMK MP (and former education minister) Laszlo Szigeti during the discussion. As well, he considers the €300 fee for taking the exam to be too high and suggests reducing it to €200. However, Mikolaj doesn't see this making a substantive difference.
Szigeti would also like to see provisions for bilinguality stipulated in the law. "If the education programme is carried out in a foreign language, the certificate should be in that language as well," said the SMK MP.
Opposition representatives were also interested in why the ministry doesn't allow life-long education to be provided by a wider spectrum of institutions. "There are about 1,500 institutions and not everyone can educate," responded the minister, adding that the law should also introduce an Accreditation Commission.
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