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Rosova: Mikolaj's Done Much, But Little Good
Friday 05 March 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, March 5 (TASR) - Education Minister Jan Mikolaj (a co-governing SNS party nominee) has done a lot for the education system but not much of it has been positive, opposition SDKU-DS party MP Tatiana Rosova said on Friday.
According to Rosova, who was speaking following an inspection carried out by Prime Minister Robert Fico at the ministry earlier in the day, Mikolaj has fulfilled his roles but only from the formal point of view.
"The laws that were laid out in the Government Manifesto have indeed been enacted. Unfortunately, however, the laws don't take into consideration their actual impact on pupils, and teachers' lives," added Rosova, who chairs the parliamentary education committee.
The objectives as presented by Mikolaj are very nice indeed and one can agree with them, she noted, citing "more freedom for schools, remuneration of teachers based on the quality of their work, distinguishing schools according to their quality ... (it) all sounds fine bar their implementation." According to her, rules that have been adopted on Mikolaj's initiative contradict these goals and "definitely didn't help meet them".
Rosova brought up the issue of the Government's ambitious goal to finance the education sector to the tune of 5 percent of Slovakia's GDP. "What's this in reality? It's 3.8 percent of GDP combined with EU funds, that's way less," she said.
Upon carrying out his inspection, the premier said that Mikolaj has begun an extremely difficult task with his attempt to categorise colleges and universities in Slovakia based on their quality.
Fico said that he will fully support the minister's efforts. "Although we may be satisfied with how many university students we have, we still can't be satisfied with the quality of education that these students are being offered," he said.
However, Fico praised the ministry's contribution to the development of science and the way that EU funds have been drawn to date.
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