'Slovakia' Party to Appeal to Constitutional Court over School Discrimination

Bratislava, 18 September (TASR) - Members of the 'Slovakia' party want to appeal to the Constitutional Court over a draft law on school funding which they say discriminates against parents and students and interferes with constitutional rights, TASR learnt on Thursday. They called on Education Minister Tomas Drucker (Voice-SD) not to close church and private schools and to withdraw the proposals from Parliament so that they can be reworked. They also criticised a 'merged debate' in which MPs can only speak about seven bills in a single debate. Veronika Remisova ('For the People') thinks that if the proposal on funding goes through, parents won't be able to decide which school is best for their children but will be forced to place their children in the nearest school. She noted that the proposal entails cutting the so-called normative for private and religious schools if they don't meet the requirements of the education minister. „The education minister wants private and church schools to fill their capacity with up to 70 or 90 percent of the students in the district. This means that if a school has a specific focus for which it was established, for example, it focuses on children with special needs, it will no longer be able to focus on those children but will have to accept children from its own district first," she told a news conference. Parliament has begun debating a package of education bills. Rastislav Kratky ('Slovakia' party) recalled that seven bills have been included in one debate, which is unprecedented in Parliament. These are several new laws, and MPs wanted to comment on each of them and speak about comments from the public. Kratky also criticised the changes to home education, which would require students to appear in person at school for every exam. He sees this as a disadvantage. Mandatory home visits by a teacher is not a problem, he said, and families welcome this, but he said that schools don't have the finances to send a teacher to every family on a mandatory basis. Drucker said that all the education laws are related. „I see this session of Parliament as a decisive moment for the future of education. We have before us a package of seven laws that are bringing about the biggest reform of education in the past 20 years." said the minister. tim/df/mf