Child care in Slovenia – State of art

In Slovenia, at the beginning of the transition (1990), the share of the women in the full time employed labor force was already 48%, and Slovenia had the highest percentage of full time working mothers with pre-school children in all Europe. One year long 100% paid maternal and parental leave was combined with a rather good network of well subsidized public crèches and kinder gardens in 62 municipalities which were in charge of this network.

High level of job insecurity, high level of youth unemployment, total flexibility of employment for young people (short contract’s employment), no public housing policy, pushed already very low birth rate down from more than 20.000 of births per year in the eighties to only 17.300 in 2003.

Slovenia is the only former socialist country which did not seriously dismantle its system of support for equal opportunities of working parents. Even more, this is also the only transition country where the support of the state for better balancing of family life and waged work for men and women has been improved:

• The percentage of children included in child care facilities has risen from 52% in 1987 to 64% in 2006. The researches prove that this system of state subsidized child care is unevenly developed – there is not enough places in some rural areas and in the areas  where young families are moving in. It is also short for some 10.000 places, mostly for the children from better off urban families who look for cheaper solutions in the grey economy private child care.
• One year long 100% paid maternity and parental leave stayed in place, and a short paid leave only for the fathers was enacted on the top of it.
• The system of public child care facilities improved its quality standards – employed staff which works with the children has to have university degree of education, the number of the children in the groups was slightly lowered, the curricula in the child care facilities was enriched and diversified. Additional learning possibilities (music, dance, foreign languages, sports) are available only with additional payments from the parents.
• Privatization of the public child care network was very limited, as social democratic women led several campaigns against all attempts of privatization and de-secularization of public child care and always got the public opinion on their side. Some private owned and church – Caritas owned - new child care facilities were opened with the generous state subsidies.
• The parents pay between 0 and 30% of the economic price of the costs for their child in the public child care – depending of their income, property and the number of the children in the family.
  

After the full fledged conservative government took power in 2004, it started to look for the arguments why the public child care should be further diversified (read: privatized and in the bigger extend given in the hands of the Catholic  educators). The following arguments of the government were given for the public debate:

1. The system discriminates against the families who do not want or can not put their children in public facilities. These families do not get any public child care subsidies.

2. The system is too luxurious and smaller local communalities cannot stand its financial burden. The staff is too qualified, the groups are too small, technical standards are exaggerated.

3. The system does not allow enough choice to the parents who would like to give to their children an upbringing in accordance with their ideological background (Christian values based upbringing for example) or who would like to have a different curricula or different pedagogical approach.

Women in SD party are now discussing the future child care policy that our party should offer at the forthcoming national elections. The following ideas have been circulated:

1. Slovenia needs to reach the European Commission child care goals till 2010.

2. The parliament should enact the right of every child to high quality public child care. All forms of child care (public, private, semi-public) could be accepted but only under the umbrella and with controlling mechanisms of the public child care.

3. There should be no lowering of the standards of quality, and the state budget should help to keep these standards at the same level in all the system, in the big cities as well as in the smallest hamlets.

4. It is preferable to keep the basic curriculum for each age group of pre-school children, based on the EU set of values and respect of child’s individuality, diversity and need for inclusion. This curriculum should be enriched with the bigger offer of special learning items preferred by the parents and children. For each child a specific program of development of his/her best abilities should be prepared by the group of experts within and outside the child care facility (Finnish model). All individual and additional programs should be also publicly funded, in the same percentage as the basic program.

5. The share of the economic price for all parents should be kept as low as possible, and the child care fee for the parents with middle and higher income should be lowered. The long term goal for the SD is free of charge high quality public child care for all children.

6. Additional programs for the parents and children with specific needs should be tailored and publicly subsidized (shorter programs, longer programs for the parents with longer working hours or different working time,  programs for the inclusion of the children with specific needs)

Reporting: Sonja Lokar, SD Women’s Forum, Slovenia