Abstract:

When Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004 the country’s borders opened and the Slovak people were able to emmigrate for work, so called economic migrants. The following waves of migration included mostly young people, students. With time, they were joined by their families and created a group of so called temporary migrants who thought of returning to their homeland. Business Alliance of Slovakia (2015) estimates around 300 thousand Slovak people living abroad and divides them into following groups: 40% living in Czech Republic, 25% living in Great Britain, 15% living in Austria and Germany (together 80%), and remaining 20% living in: Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, France, Sweden and elsewhere.

This paper concentrates on current issues common in educational centres of Western European countries which merged into International Slovak Educational Institution and Association (ISEIA). These centres were at first created in response to the need of Slovak people to preserve their national identity and later grew mainly for the need to educate the children in the Slovak language. Lately, in response to the return to homeland and subsequent re-intergration of the citizens to their country‘s environmnet and society, the educational centres have seen the rise in the attendance of children as well as increase in demands from parents who are asking the centres to prepare their children for the return to their homeland. The parents are increasingly asking for more effective process in preparation and proceedings of the children’s ability assessments which are compulsory for every child in order for them to continue and/or finish the Slovak school. At present, the children’s assessments are a highly discussed matter in the educational centres by both the educational providers and the parents. The assessments are not structured, they are varied and with no definite criteria, marking scheme, or a unified results scheme. A project named ‘Slovak Educational Centres In the World’ has now been created and forwarded to Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic in order to tackle this issue – to standardize the children’s assessments, to define the contents and the extent of these assessments, as well as the place of these assessments, and to create the diagnostics and marking tools. The project is awaiting its accreditation. The issue of children’s assessments of Slovak children living in Great Britain has also been a topic of exploration in a dissertation work named ‘Education of Slovak Children living in Countries of the European Union. Issues and Solutions.’

Keywords:

educational centres, education, assessments, Slovaks,