Development of Slovenian Education Policy in European Context and Beyond

Nowadays lifelong learning is widely recognized as a solution in facing the intense new challenges of an increasingly globalized world. In facing these challenges and in order to achieve common educational goals, the nation states are included in different forms of international cooperation. It is very interesting to see how these different forms of international cooperation have impact on different aspects of national education policy and how the idea of lifelong learning has helped countries to increasingly perceive themselves as similar with respect to necessary educational changes. Taking into consideration both inherent perspective (international cooperation influence and national responses to it), first of all it is essential to understand nation state’s historical legacies, the history of its policy paradigms and the history of its policy-making in the education field. From that point of view, on the one hand, the article explores the development of Slovenian education policy from its early beginning (the Reformation) till today. On the other hand, it focuses on the impact of different forms of international cooperation on the national education policy. On the basis of analysis of formal and informal documents and conducted semi-structured interviews, the article concludes that although Slovenia is included in various different forms of international cooperation, their influence on Slovenian education policy is limited. However, this cannot be solely attributed to education as a sensitive policy area with a low level of implementation imperative, where cooperation is in most cases voluntary, but also to the trends in Slovenian history.