Education in Slovenia

Education in Slovenia

Primary school

Children first enter primary schooling at about age 6 and finish at about age 14. Each group of children born in the same year forms one grade or class in primary school which takes nine years or grades. Each year is divided in three semesters and each of them is around three months long. Once or twice per term, children have holidays: Autumn, Christmas, winter and May first holidays; each holiday is approximately one week long. In summer, school ends on 24 June (except in the last ninth grade, where it ends one week earlier), followed by a holiday of more than two months. The next school year starts on 1 September.

1st period

1st Period is a beginning of schooling for every child. From first to forth grade children stay in one classroom and have one class or form teacher who teaches them all subjects except PE, music, and art. In the beginning of first year there is always one special pedagogue in classroom and he or she helps the master teacher to lead little ones in the new system. They start with reading, writing and counting. In second grade they begin to learn more and more stuffs. They have native language (Slovenian, Hungarian or Italian language), mathematics, natural and sociology science, music, physical education and art. In forth grade they begin to learn their first foreign language, which is usually English. They have only descriptive marks and the real marks come in around second grade (this is school dependent: in some places real marks come in not earlier than in fourth grade).

2nd period

The 2nd Period of primary schooling starts in fifth grade when children begin switching classrooms. They still have a master teacher, which is never the same as in past four years. He or she usually teaches them one or two subjects and all others are taught by different specialized teachers. Main subjects which they need to attend are maths, native language, first foreign language, PE, music and art. Later they start physics, chemistry, geography, history, biology, technics and housekeeping. In seventh grade they must choose three new subjects from around 40 subjects which are offered (usually different foreign languages, astronomy, fine art, computer science etc.).

State tests

On the end of the third, sixth and ninth grade pupil must write special state tests in maths, native language and first foreign language (except in last year the school minister defines the last one) . Those exams are then checked and first two do not mean anything (they only measure the average or how smart children really are). But exam in ninth grade must be written at the best because they count your end points and add up them with points that you reached in the end of last year in all subjects that you attended to. That is very important for pupils because then they continue with higher school. And if they have not achieved so much points as their wanted school has define they will not be accept.

= Marks and grades =

In primary school marks start with 1 (insufficient) and is the only not failure mark. The second one is 2 (sufficient), next is 3 (good), then 4 (very good) and the best is 5 (excellent). For first positive mark you need to achieve little more than 50 percent, next range is around 65 percent, then 75 and for the best mark you need to know 90 percent of everything.

The National Education Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (ZRSŠ)

The National Education Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (Zavod Republike Slovenije za Šolstvo - ZRSŠ) is the main public organisation in Slovenia which encourages development in the field of education in Slovenia up to pre-university - covering all kindergartens, elementary schools, secondary schools, music schools, and student boarding schools.

Secondary school

External links

* [http://www.mss.gov.si/index.php?id=83&L=1 Education in Slovenia] from The Ministry of Education and Sport site
* [http://www.zrss.si/ The National Education Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (ZRSŠ)]

References