Ethnic children should master Slovak language - government

Children from ethnic minorities’ families should improve their knowledge of Slovak under the plan proposed by the Slovak Education Ministry and approved by the government today.

In the future, experts are to draft a programme under which ethnic children should be taught some Slovak at pre-school facilities.
Education Ministry representatives say sufficient emphasis is not laid on the teaching of Slovak at the schools with an ethnic language of instruction.

However, they also say the standard of teaching of the mother tongue and foreign languages is also insufficient.

They say an improved knowledge of Slovak, the state language, will open more opportunities for ethnic minorities’ members in their search for jobs. Children at nurseries should master the state language, they add.

The Education Ministry is headed by Jan Mikolaj, a nominee of the ultra nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS, a junior governing coalition member).

The Hungarian Coalition Party (SMK) has repeatedly criticised certain ministerial proposals such as the effort to have geographical names in Hungarian textbooks only in Slovak.

Ethnic children will need a thorough knowledge of Slovak because in the future they might have to pass the school-leaving examination from the subject, the Ministry said.

According to the 2001 census, there are some half a million ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia inhabited by about five million people.
In the 2001 census, 10,000 people claimed Ukrainian nationality and another 24,000 people said they were Ruthenians.
There is also a large number of Romanies, whose estimates vary between 200,000 and 400,000.