The Minister of Education has announced his intention to introduce compulsory pre-school education for children aged three in Slovakia. The Ministry has published only one press release to defend this blanket and mandatory measure. It contains a number of inaccurate claims that do not stand up to critical debate. In this text, I will describe three reasons why the proposed expansion of compulsory school attendance is the wrong public policy, and we will also look at how it could be done differently, better.
Problematic Feasibility and Effectiveness
The ministry defends lowering the compulsory school age primarily on the need to improve preschool attendance among children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The problem with this idea is that the state has not been able to ensure sufficient capacity in kindergartens and primary schools, even four years after lowering the compulsory schooling age from six to five. Dozens of primary schools in areas with a high proportion of children from disadvantaged backgrounds operate on a two-shift basis. And there is also insufficient capacity in many kindergartens.
The ministry itself admits that Slovakia will lack approximately 1,000 new kindergarten teachers. While this may not seem like a high number, the problem is that the shortage will be concentrated in specific regions, making it all the more difficult to address.
Moreover, even if the capacity problem is eventually resolved, it does not automatically mean that attendance among children from disadvantaged backgrounds will improve. This is most evident in elementary schools, which face high rates of absenteeism and truancy. The Ministry of Education itself has acknowledged this by recently attempting to tighten the rules for excusing absences. Yet the problem persists, even though elementary schools generally hold more authority in the eyes of parents than kindergartens, and the children there are older and more independent. If these parents are not ensuring the attendance of their seven-year-old children today, why should we expect them to start doing so with their three-year-olds?
As a result, the Ministry may end up imposing new, blanket obligations on 120,000 families—burdening many families from the majority population and going against their view of what a proper childhood should look like—while still failing to solve the attendance problem among children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Questionable Support in Research
In its press release, the Ministry of Education states: “Research confirms that quality education from the age of three develops thinking, emotional intelligence, and reduces the risk of school failure.” However, this claim is based on an outdated and incomplete interpretation of the current scientific consensus in the field of early childhood education.
Recent research has significantly challenged the original optimistic conclusions about the long-term effects of preschool education on children’s later outcomes. Several recently published, reputable studies using experimental methods show mixed, negligible, or even negative effects of preschool education, particularly when it is universal, mandatory, and focused on improving academic skills at an early age.
In our new publication titled “The Preschool Myth: More Doesn’t Always Mean Better” (available in Slovak here), we provide an overview of the latest research that documents a shift in expert consensus regarding the benefits of early childhood education.
If any research confirms the benefits of interventions, it is usually about high-quality, individualized, and comprehensive services for very young children from birth. These services involve parents and are provided by non-profit organisations such as Cesta von and its Omama programme in Slovakia (A preventive early‑childhood intervention launched in 2018, designed to support children from marginalized Roma communities (aged 0–4) and their parents, led by trained women from within the communities). If the Ministry of Education wishes to apply evidence-based approaches in public policy, it should look for ways to provide targeted support to these organizations and projects and to remove the barriers that hinder their expansion.
Western Civilization Is Built on Individual Freedoms
In a free society, people have the right to decide how, when, and where they will spend their time. Interventions in individual freedom are acceptable only in exceptional cases, such as convicted criminals who are deprived of liberty as part of their sentence. A similar exception has historically applied to children in the form of compulsory schooling. Today, academics debate the extent to which this was motivated by a desire to provide education for all and the extent to which it was an attempt by rulers to secure the obedience of the masses.
Regardless of which interpretation proves correct, expanding this exception to individual freedom should not be treated as a routine instrument of public policy. This is especially true when there are serious practical and theoretical reasons to believe that such a policy will not deliver the proclaimed goals.
The burden of proof lies with the state and policymakers to convincingly demonstrate that such an intrusion into individual freedoms will yield clear and substantial benefits without causing serious negative consequences for ordinary people’s lives. This has not happened; on the contrary, certain formulations raise serious concerns about the implementation of this measure.
For example, the Minister explained that parents of three-year-old children will be able to request individual (home-based) education, but “only if it is in the interest of the child.” What exactly this means remains unclear, but the Minister specified that the parents must apply for permission from the kindergarten director. And what if the director prioritises the financial resources that come with the attendance of the three-year-old over the wishes of the parents to raise their child at home?
Targeted Policies in the Field
When we look at domestic and international policy documents on early childhood education, we find no recommendations for expanding compulsory preschool attendance, let alone for children as young as three. For example, the latest 2025 OECD policy study, which explicitly addresses “Reducing Inequality by Investing in Early Childhood Education and Care,” says nothing about introducing or expanding mandatory preschool attendance. Similarly, the Ministry of Education’s analytical unit did not suggest such a measure in its 2023 analysis focused on preschool education for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Instead, recommendations in both international and domestic expert literature most often emphasize policies aimed at removing all financial and non-financial barriers that prevent poor families from sending their children to kindergartens. Public kindergartens in Slovakia are officially free, but parents of three- and four-year-olds still have to pay monthly for meals, various informal fees, and sometimes even transportation. As a result, sending a small child to kindergarten can cost dozens of euros per month, posing a significant barrier for low-income families from disadvantaged communities.
If the state wants to increase preschool participation among these families, it should eliminate these financial barriers and help cover additional costs associated with preschool attendance.
The literature also recommends steps such as mapping parental needs and investigating the reasons why some parents do not send their children to kindergarten. These reasons may include, for example, language barriers faced by Roma children, since Slovak is often not their mother tongue. Or it may turn out that parents themselves have little or no education, and therefore do not see its value for their young children either. In such cases, public information campaigns and on-the-ground awareness efforts would be key policy tools.
All of these targeted measures should undergo testing in an experimental setting. This involves tracking their results and comparing them to those of a control group. This is the kind of approach that 21st-century public policy deserves. However, the Slovak Ministry is treating policy as a massive social experiment, making public policy in the style of the 19th century. And that is not good public policy.
Translated by Ina Sečíková
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