PS: Budget for Education Proof of Low Priority

Bratislava, December 21 (TASR) - Next year's draft budget for education shows that this area isn't a priority for the government, the opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) party has said, noting that the budget, for instance, doesn't address the fact that the salaries of teachers are lower than those of other university-educated employees. According to the party, the Education Ministry is presenting the budget in an overly optimistic light when it talks about annual nominal growth in spending of 20 percent. "It may appear to be a generous increase in resources, but the reality is that the difference between the actual amount of funds flowing into the Education Ministry's budget in 2023 and the 2024 budget is only 5 percent. This is because the budget at the beginning of 2023 was so undersized that it had to be additionally adjusted during the year," said PS MP Viera Kalmarova. The MP at the same time pointed to the opinion of the Supreme Audit Office (NKU), according to which the budget for education "doesn't address the long-term modernisation debt in the education sector in any fundamental manner". Meanwhile, PS MP Ingrid Kosova claimed that while the draft budget is promising salary indexation of €158 million, this measure should have originally been applied in September 2023, and so it was simply translated into the 2024 budget. zel/df