One of the topics, that the public was concerned about, is also preparation of the (third) White Paper on Education, which is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. The SDS parliamentary group wonders whether the current leadership of the Ministry of Education still enjoys confidence within the school system and whether it is competent enough to decide about the fate of the Slovenian school system. Well, for now, this is less important, because the resignation of Prime Minister Marjan Sarec also places the minister in charge, Jernej Pikalo, in a position where he only can carries on ongoing operations. However, it is still worth highlighting some of the main points, raised from the parliamentary question.
According to SDS parliamentary group, the ministry imagined that the new White Paper should primarily be a strategic document that would not represent a national curricular renewal or will contain any action plans, but would adopt all of them later. This therefore should be a short document that deals primarily with the future and responds to key technological, social, demographic and other changes that will occur in the next 10 to 15 years. For this purpose, a group of experts was established, headed by the director of the Jozef Stefan Institute Dr. Jadran Lenarcic. According to the minister, the key criterion for selecting the members of the group was that they belong to “different ethical and moral orientations”, come from different academic backgrounds, are a mix of theorists and practitioners and already have “historical memory” of the white papers so far. However, it appeared that the aforementioned body had members belonging to the same core of view (former ministers Mr.Igor Luksic and Mr.Pavle Zgaga, SVIZ Secretary Mr.Branimir Strukelj, etc.).
SDS members are therefore interested in whether all interested stakeholders involved in the field of education will also be included in all professional discussions. Namely, more than 80 experts from different fields of education participated in the process of drafting the White Paper from year 2011. As they wrote, the prevailing expectation among teachers is that in the future the education system should relieve them of the bureaucracy and give them back the autonomy. In addition to the confidence in their teaching work, teachers also want better opportunities for professional development.
So, does the tragic of the second half of the 1990s repeats, when Mr.Gaber’s group took over the monopoly in the National Curriculum Council?