This school year, 1,633 pupils from Macedonia are enrolled in primary schools in Slovenia, according to data from the Slovenian Ministry of Education. And these students of immigrant families struggle with mastering the Slovenian language, just like the children from Bosnia and Kosovo, who are mostly in this country this school year. 7,713 pupils from Bosnia and Herzegovina and 3,405 pupils from Kosovo attend Slovenian language classes in primary schools. There are over 2,000 students from Ukraine and Serbia and over 2,000.
The increasing influx of primary school students from abroad in December last year reopened the debate in the Slovenian Parliament about the need to integrate these children into the educational system through special courses on Slovenian language and culture from other countries.
The opposition party Nova Slovenija (New Slovenia) proposed that children whose mother tongue is not Slovenian take a Slovenian language test before enrolling in school. Children in the first three years are expected to know the Slovenian language at level A1, and children from the second and third years at level A2.
