Branislav KoÄŤan at the "Long Noses" protest of teachers. (source: TASR)
Education, Science, Research and Sport Minister Juraj Draxler will meet dissatisfied teachers prior to this demonstration, on January 21.
ISU has declared a strike alert due to the long-term ignoring of teachers’ demands to provide adequate financing of the education system, the TASR newswire wrote. Teachers expect the government and parliament to adopt specific measures to resolve this situation. If they do not, the teachers will launch an unconditional strike.
More than 5,400 teachers from almost 300 schools have signed up for the strike.
Slovak opposition parties could not care less about teachers, head of the new SKOK party Juraj Miškov said on the same day, speaking after it emerged that only eight MPs had subscribed to SKOK’s initiative to hold a special parliamentary session on problems plaguing the education sector and the looming teachers’ strike. The signatures were provided by Miškov, Daniel Krajcer, Martin Chren, Jozef Kollár (all now with the extra-parliamentary SKOK), fellow independent legislators Magdaléna Vášáryová, Viliam Novotný and Ä˝udovít Kaník (all formerly with Slovak Democratic and Christian Union-SDKÚ), and former Ordinary People and Independent Personalities-OÄ˝aNO MP Mikuláš Huba. The initiative fell well short of the 30 MPs’ signatures required for such a session to take place. The initiative of the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) and Most-Híd who opted instead to seek a special session of the parliamentary committee for education, amounts to “politicking”, TASR quoted Miškov as having said.
