Family Dakič Prelc – SHARE
We are parents of a child, that is now attending the fifth grade of the French School and kindergarten in Ljubljana. It all started seven years ago with language courses for smaller children. Looking for an alternative solution to combine kindergarten and languages, my husband and I discovered French kindergarten in Ljubljana, which is basically not a only nursery, but a small school with a real curriculum and for our daughter that was the perfect combination of challenge and motivation.
What we also liked – and still do is, that the school and kindergarten follow the French national pedagogical curriculum and that this program is standardized – it is the same all over the world and under the supervision of the French state (AEFE). This gives us the assurance of quality, a very high level of education and State control of it, which is very important to us as parents. From the first day of enrolment, first in kindergarten and later in elementary school, our daughter faced this pedagogical program completely independently. She is a great student and likes the school so much, that she can not wait to go to school every morning. When she borrows books in the city library regardless of the language and reads them equally fluently, my heart sings. When I see her communicating with children from other countries/backgrounds open and with no effort I know it was the right decision for our daughter to attend an international school. I’m deeply convinced all parents want the best for their children – and choose kindergarten or schools they think are the best for their children, according to their values.
Slovenian parents of children in French school face several problems. The biggest is financing, since the parents have to pay the tuition fees and all other school expenses to 100% alone. This is the reason more and more Slovenian families take children out of international schools every year. With an average Slovenian income and rising costs per year many parents can not bear such long-term financial burden. On the other side, French families living in Slovenia are entitled to apply for a subvention from the French State, which helps the families with tuition fees. Basically that means that parents of children sitting in the same classroom are being financially discriminated, since Slovenian parents have to pay everything by themselves. We, the Slovenian parents pay taxes as equally as any other working parents in Slovenia. Despite that, the education of our children does not cost the Slovenian State anything. At the end, the money that the Slovenian state would give for the education of our children if they were educated in Slovenian public schools, remains entirely in the state budget.
That is why we are deeply convinced that all private kindergartens and schools in Slovenia should have the same rights and duties and that the public part of the curriculum should be paid to 100% by the Slovenian State, as the Slovenian Constitutional Court already decided. We do not want anything more and anything less for our children than children in Slovenian public schools get. The right to choose the school should be one of the basics of parent democracy in Slovenia. This is the only way all Slovenian parents will have the option of choosing. We are strictly against social stratification. The French school in Ljubljana also employs Slovenian teachers and you can not find any elitism in this school. The school itself is located within a Slovenian Elementary School, that is also known for excellent integration of migrant children and children from countries of former Yugoslavia, and which at the same time provides (co) use of a gym, science laboratory, etc. so the physical conditions are the same for both schools. In our opinion, the only criteria for choosing the private kindergartens and schools should be their pedagogical program and general orientation of schools values and nothing else.
In addition to many years of neglecting the issue, the French school in Ljubljana was founded in 1991 (the Slovene children was forced by Slovene state for double schooling at the time) the State in 2016 adopt the Act of International schools and kindergartens, pushed French school init which enabled her to register but at the same time excluded her from the financing system which is valid for all other private Slovenian kindergartens and schools. In our opinion, this is very similar, as if the State would accept the Acts for each type of private schools and kindergartens separately e.g. Catholic School Act, Montessori school Act … and then exclusively included all such kindergartens and schools without providing for all of them the same basis (duties and rights).
The second problem parents in international schools in Slovenia face is the language restriction. The Slovenian state defines in several laws (Article 3 ZOFVI and in The Kindergarten Act and the Basic School Act) that teaching language in Slovenia is Slovenian only – except for ethnically mixed areas.
Given that our country is an equal member of the EU since 2004 and EU has 24 official languages and the European Parliament accepts all official languages as working languages we are deeply convinced that the Slovenian State has to eliminate this anomaly as soon as possible. The EU encourages all its citizens to be multilingual; specifically, it encourages them to be able to speak two languages in addition to their native language. As the name says – an international school has international: teachers, students, classes, languages… To limit the teaching language in an international school only to Slovene is paradox, completely illogical and not in according to EU principles of diversity. It is high time that the Slovenian State writes new pedagogical Acts, based on new modern foundations that includes and recognizes the existence of EU and their languages. Excellent role model could be the Scandinavian example, and with that approach to the European average percent of founding private schools. To be given democratic choice under the same conditions is equal right for all people. Nothing more and nothing less, let the State show their love and rightness from “step mother to mother” and from “step father to father” for all the children for the common good of the State (public and private) education and all our children, for the respect of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia and protecting the foundation of our (also constitutional) democracy established in 1991.