Education reform and the normalisation of private education in Slovenia

Abstract

This article examines the long-term effects of the regulation of private education adopted in the course of the education reform in 1996 and the sustainability of the guiding principles that served as the starting point for this regulation. It reviews the guiding principles of the introduction of private education, the goals of the reform laid down in the White Paper in 1995 and the regulations introduced on the basis of these tenets. It follows up on the ‘life’ of the legal solutions and the history of (attempted) amendments of the legislation, which generally start in the Slovenian Parliament and then proceed all the way to the Constitutional Court. The article also examines the effects of the adopted regulation: how the private education sector has established itself and what kind of relationship it has developed vis-a-vis public education. The second part of the article explores certain developments in the field of education in Slovenia and on the global scale, using them as the basis for assessing the sustainability of the goals that guided the education reform. The thesis proposed by the article is that it is the normalisation of private education in Slovenia should be considered the main achievement of the education reform.