Drucker Introduces Two-Tier System for Dealing with School Absences

Bratislava, March 18 (TASR) - Education Minister Tomas Drucker (Voice-SD) is introducing a two-tier system for children who miss classes at pre-schools and primary schools via changes to the education law, with two different regimes - one more flexible and the other stricter, the minister announced at a press conference on Tuesday. Drucker stated that the stricter regime will automatically apply to all schools from September 1. The more flexible regime will only be available to schools that regularly report data on absences and don't exceed the reference value of 250 missed hours per pupil per year. "The new system will be divided into two regimes. One is more flexible, which is essentially the current system, under which parents will be able to excuse their child's absence for up to five consecutive days, with a maximum of ten days in one month. We have limited it when compared to the current system. Now two consecutive months can have a maximum of 15 days. This regime, you see, allows children to be excused for up to 450 hours per year," said Drucker. Under the stricter regime, a child attending primary school can be excused for a maximum of 15 days per school term, after which a doctor's note would be required. In the case of pre-schools, a child can be excused for seven consecutive days and up to 21 days per school term. According to Drucker, the reference value will be measured regularly. The Education Ministry will then publish it, and if a school doesn't exceed 250 hours, it will be possible for it to transition to the more flexible regime at the end of the term. The minister noted that the proposal emerged after internal analyses revealed systematic absenteeism at some schools in Slovakia. "About 5 percent of schools have alarmingly high absentee rates. At these approximately 100 schools, pupils miss more than 250 hours per year, with the average reaching up to 576 hours per pupil across the entire school," he said, adding that abuse of the system mainly concerns pupils from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. lin/df