Amendments to the Vocational education (VET) Act, adopted in December 2017, came into effect in September 2018. They defined access to education for foreign citizens and student and mentor status.
The amendments introduce changes related to work-based learning (WBL). The central register to be established in 2019 will list all learning workplaces and apprenticeship places as defined by the Act on apprenticeship (2017). The Institute of the Republic of Slovenia for VET (CPI) will maintain the register. All information will be publicly accessible: name of the company offering WBL, the content of the training programme, and number of training places available, although there will be no personal information about mentors in companies.
Amendments also define conditions for becoming a mentor in a company and verification of learning workplaces. The novelty is that the Ministry of Education will prescribe conditions for the workplace and equipment required, based on proposals by chambers.
Student rights and duties are also redefined. The most notable change is that a person who has already acquired upper secondary vocational education can no longer enrol into another upper secondary programme under the same conditions. The aim is to increase the efficiency of the education process and prevent enrolment for the sole purpose of retaining the student status.
Access to education for foreign citizenships who reside in Slovenia is improved, and the rights to VET and technical education evened out. There is a language course for students whose mother tongue is not Slovenian or who had not completed basic school education in Slovenia.
The new Act also prescribes the procedure and types of disciplinary measure for students: reminder, reprimand, alternative measures, and exclusion. One of the changes introduced is that the certificate supplement is now an obligatory part of the school certificate, providing detailed, cohesive and internationally comparable information to employees about the vocational qualifications attained. It had previously been voluntary.
