Parents on private education in Slovenia

Education in Slovenia has been mostly under the umbrella of public educational institutions. Represented in a small proportion are private kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, which are the focus of this thesis. For a better understanding of private education in Slovenia, a part of the theoretical work is aimed also at its history. Presented is also the Slovenian legislation and conditions for the functioning of private kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, as well as forms of government funding - a concession and public funding. Exposed are research findings, which have already been performed on the subject of private education in Slovenia. For a broader insight into the private education, a condensed description of private education in selected countries of the European Union is included. The empirical part of the thesis presents the findings of the analysis of the answers to the questionnaire that was given to 120 parents with their children in public and private kindergartens, primary and secondary schools. Share of parents with children enrolled in private educational institutions was namely lower (32.5%), though together with those who were already thinking about entering their children in private educational institutions the share is much higher (45%). A bit over half of these parents (55%) was still unfavorable to enrollment in private educational institution. The results show that the place of residence, the net monthly income of the family and the larger number of children in the family (3 or more) are not important factors in deciding to enroll their children in a private educational institution. Most parents would decide to enroll their child(ren) into a private kindergarten or elementary school if it is between 10 and 20 km from home. However we could not prove that parents would chose private high school, even if it is further than 41 km away, and that the most important factor for them would be the denominational direction of the educational institution. On average, parents of children in public educational institutions evaluated the pedagogical work better than parents of children in private ones. Statistically significant differences have been revealed in personal relationships of teachers/ educators towards children and the offered variety of extracurricular activities, which are, according to parents better in public kindergartens and schools. According to parents, children/ pupils communities are better formed by private educational institutions