The heads of self-governing regions on Wednesday, February 13 presented to Education Minister Dušan Čaplovič a proposal that should prevent mooted lay-offs of teachers at primary and secondary schools from taking place, the TASR newswire learnt.
According to the proposal, municipalities and self-governing regions should receive the entire package of funds for salaries of school staff as planned by the ministry. This package should then be distributed among individual schools according to what local and regional bodies identify as their real needs. At the moment, the authorities are unable to transfer money allocated for one school to another school. The current scheme threatens the funding of 30-40 schools in each region, said teachers' trade union leader Pavel Ondek.
Čaplovič says that the proposal sounds reasonable. However, his spokesman Michal Kaliňák said that local and regional authorities must continue with 'rationalisation' of schools. Nonetheless, the minister does not have any analysis as to how many teachers in the system are superfluous. The president of Prešov Region, Peter Chudík, stated that if the proposal is adopted, the salaries of teachers in his region might rise by as much as 7-8 percent, with similar figures holding true for other regions.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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