CHILDREN from Jarovnice, a village in the Sabinov district with the biggest Roma community in Slovakia, will attend the first finished modular school, opened on October 21. It is a container school with eight classrooms and a capacity for about 25 children. The pupils will learn there in two shifts, the SITA newswire reported.
The new school is part of the existing school in the village, at which 1,024 pupils are currently enrolled, with 41 classrooms. Its construction cost €286,000, of which €86,000 was paid by the municipality, with the rest funded by state.
The new classrooms will help to reduce class size, which has been exceeded due to a lack of capacities, especially in the first grade. The school will also stop using the provisory spaces in a local manor house. The school will, however, continue its double-shift schedule, since, in order to abolish it or extend the capacities of the gym and the cafeteria, it would need another three container schools, the school’s headmaster Jozef Bugna told SITA.
The school in Jarovnice is the first completed modular school in eastern Slovakia. The government allocated €1 million for construction of together five such schools. Other schools will be built in Podhorany, Krížová Ves, Stráne pod Tatrami and Kecerovce by the end of the year, said government proxy for Roma communities, Peter Pollák, as reported by SITA.
Pollák added he would like the new container schools to help children receive a basic education, which would then continue with further education and result in more Roma finding jobs in the labour market, SITA wrote.
The government proxy also reminded that during the past 10 years the government contributed to only one brick-and-mortar school in the village, which had a high student population and cost €1 million. The investment of that same amount will now help to build schools in five municipalities. The container schools solve the problem of a lack of facilities in the easiest way, as they provide the necessary standard and are the cheapest alternative, he said, as reported by SITA.
Pollák also wants to use this system to construct kindergartens and secondary schools, according to SITA.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
