Slovenia

Abstract

Slovenia has the most pronounced ageing population when compared with other European countries. According to Eurostat older adults (aged 65-plus) represented 16.5 % of the population. Slovenia has no explicit national policy on the older adult education, nevertheless there is the commitment of the governmental policy to improve the social, health and educational possibilities for older people. Older adult education has been included in the sphere of a non-formal education of adults from its beginning, which, in Slovenia, is modestly financed, and therefore loosely supervised and superficially evaluated. The preparation of appropriate local and national educational policies, based on the principles of critical educational gerontology, will have to be applied, with local administrations taking over the responsibility for providing opportunities in education. In Slovenia, older adult education is particularly concerned with general, non-formal education, where the prevailing share of the range of organised education is offered by the Universities of the Third Age and Adult Education Centres. Research in Slovenia shows that there is an important difference between the level of education of the current generation of older adults and the adults who are about to enter this period. The future generations of older adults in Slovenia will be better educated, more demanding regarding the educational offer and will probably have a higher degree of motivation for education in later years. The existent educational offer does not answer the actual diverse needs of different groups of older people. The level of participation of older people in educational programmes is very low, due to different factors (their level of education, limited mobility and access to education, stereotypical perceptions of ageing and fear to enrol in educational activities, but also due to their way of life, which is connected with the poverty of many older people, regardless where they live).