One of the Office’s priorities was and, given the existing state of affairs still is improving the protection and observance of the basic rights and freedoms of individuals in education. The right to education is considered a basic right because the education itself is the essential means for the enjoyment of other basic rights. It is only thanks to learning and attaining a certain level of education that people can break away from poverty, because education is closely associated with employment, hence, with the basic right to work, as well.

With a view to the gravity of the existing situation, investigations carried out by the Office in the recent years, persisting shortcomings in the training and education sector in the Slovak Republic and necessary measures proposed to remove the identified shortcomings, public defender of rights Mária Patakyová consider it necessary to assess and evaluate, at this time when the education issues are increasingly resonating in Slovak society, the progress made in the implementation of the measures proposed by the Office to the education ministry in the past in order to improve the protection and observance of the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals in education, especially with respect to the enjoinment of their basic right to education.