Yes, we expect that a parent’s or guardian’s interest in your child’s education and upbringing will motivate you to read a few pages that may decide your child’s future. Moreover, we have gone to a lot of trouble just to avoid future misunderstandings. And maybe you will come to the conclusion that free education is not for you (we mean mainly adults, not children).

The Ministry of Education has included us in the network of school facilities under the name of the Private Primary School of Free Democratic Education, Galaktická 9, Košice and the Private School Children’s Club as part of the Private Primary School of Free Democratic Education, Galaktická 9, Košice. Our founder is Ťahanovská záhrada, legal form: civil association, in the register of the Ministry of the Interior: association (union, society, company, club, etc.), ID number: 52101606 with registered office: Ťahanovská 2038/74, 04013 Košice – Ťahanovce, Slovak Republic, Registration number: VVS/1-900/90-55162. Our team includes approximately 30 associates. Financing of our activities is provided by several sources: through the normative from the state budget, from parents’ payments, two percent (appropriated tax) and sponsorship donations from private and legal persons.

It is important for our school to know the specifics of our pupils – whether it is a diagnosed disadvantage or a specificity that has a more significant impact on a child’s education and learning. If we are aware of these specifics, we can take them into account when working with the child. For example, if a child is putting extra effort into writing or reading to underachieve compared to their peers, we feel it is important to know this and take this into account, or provide tailored support for the child.

Also, legislation places a responsibility on us as a school to deal with the child on the basis of good quality and comprehensive information, which includes reading reports from doctors, counselling services etc. and is also part of the statutory school records we keep on the pupil.

We are committed to strive for inclusion to the best of our knowledge and conscience. We will naturally provide a basic level of human support (known as Group 1 and Group 2 sub-measures) to all pupils according to their individual needs, subject to more significant adjustments for a child’s particular special needs (learning disabilities, ADHD, impaired communication. However, it is already necessary to have a valid report from a special education examination in the counselling centre (a specialist doctor is not enough, a counselling centre is needed). Our school has a school support team made up of special educators and psychologists, we understand special educational needs and the legislation in this area and we know that the key for the legal representative is to get qualified answers to their questions, therefore, on an individual basis, we will provide consultations according to the needs of the child and the interest of the legal representative.

First of all, we would like to say that we very much appreciate the work of the school founders who have embarked on this difficult journey. We have friends and acquaintances among them, some of whom we work with or even support directly free of charge (both private primary schools and community education groups). The idea of practical, humane and freer education is a common one, but we all implement it a little differently. When a primary school is included in the network of schools in the Slovak Republic, this gives it many advantages, disadvantages and characteristics as such. Ordinary non-formalised community education groups are not school-based, so children are usually home educated – this means, for example, more freedom but less money (there is no state funding for activities). Our school is included in the network of schools from 1.9.2021 and in order to maximise the preservation of freedom, we have asked the Ministry in cooperation with the University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra for an experimental verification of self-directed education. Details about it can be found in a separate question below.

Other of the differences in our day school compared to a regular school are the efforts to self-manage the school with the participation of the children, self-directed learning, free play and being outdoors, which will be key in our school. The children will learn primarily practically and outdoors several days a week; they can, of course, also choose to learn at their own discretion at the table and indoors.

By completing the online application form. It takes a few days to process the application, after which you will be contacted by email (so check your junk mail (spam)).

No, it’s not possible. We are a primary school and compulsory pre-primary education can only be implemented in kindergartens or in non-networked pre-primary education facilities registered by the Ministry of Education (community kindergartens, children’s clubs, etc.).

The following text is valid only until 31.8.2024, we will update the new conditions: The law prescribes mandatory testing for homeschooled children at least twice a year in a regular elementary school (called a Tribal School). We will be happy to be that school for you. We encourage you to also see the question about experimental validation, where we describe a unique scheme in the country for letting children decide what they learn when: without the stress of testing or benchmarking. Of course, there is verbal assessment in every year of the whole primary school, and other support that we can negotiate individually to suit the child in question.Keďže k našim hlavným prioritám patrí slobodné učenie a voľná hra, našou snahou aj úmyslom je pripraviť dieťa na preskúšanie len do tej miery, aby preskúšanie zvládlo na takú úroveň, akú si samo stanoví – nebudeme ho nijako manipulovať, uplácať, strašiť ani pred ním tajiť legislatívny fakt, že nedostatočné vedomosti môžu znamenať zrušenie domáceho vzdelávania.
Ak ale zákonný zástupca z nejakého dôvodu chce pre dieťa „samé jednotky“, tak je v jeho záujme tomu venovať čas a priestor. Pre nás sú prvoradé požiadavky, potreby a záujmy dieťaťa. Preto nie je pre nás podstatné, čo má dieťa vyplnené v zošite, ale to, čo má v hlave a ako vie použiť dané učivo v praxi. Rodičom a zákonným zástupcom ponúkneme jasné informácie o očakávaniach, materiály a konzultačnú pomoc tak, aby dieťa zvládlo preskúšanie bez zbytočného stresu.

No, the legislation currently allows distance (meaning online) and face-to-face examinations (meaning directly at the tribal school at Galaktická 9 in Košice). You will be able to choose between online or at the school in Košice.

The school provides textbooks if you have ordered them in time (by the end of June) or according to our stock possibilities; compulsory documentation of the pupil (we will create for you the Application for Individual Education including its attachments – IVP, etc., the catalogue sheet of the pupil, on a semi-annual basis the report of the commission examinations), portfolio examination on a semi-annual basis and as one of the few schools we automatically offer the IV guarantor for both levels of education in the amount of the tuition fee. We also offer one-to-one counselling throughout the year and a highly individualised approach for pupils with special educational needs, including psychological and special educational counselling. We have also started regular online support groups for parents with our psychologists.

We respect them, understand their importance in the education market and are inspired by what we find useful or otherwise beneficial. We agree that a child’s upbringing and education should be in harmony with the processes of nature as well as with the maturation of the child in question. We agree that children and nature are close to each other; we believe that children belong in nature and can learn much from it and through it, or find natural solace in it. We also agree with the principle of multisensory perception and see its great importance for effective learning for both children and adults. However, we do not attach as much importance to order, structure, deliberate purposeful guidance in activities and their selection, nor to an adult-directed programme as the above-mentioned guidelines. We believe that a parent should be as identified as possible with the form and methods of education and training that he or she chooses for his or her child. We do not believe that we are “the best in the education market” and through our knowledge and experience, we fully understand many of our friends and their children who choose the aforementioned directions. We believe in the model of free democratic education and we are trying to implement it in the context of the Slovak education system and the current school legislation, also thanks to the project of experimental validation, so that other schools can replicate it after us.

Above all, they are destroying our children’s material values. Children, through their irresponsible attitude, destroy the tools and instruments they work with (‘around the house’); we calculate this at hundreds of euros a year. But given that I suffer from experience (100 years of the “model” Summerhill school) this does not bring any good solution. Anyway, we try to discuss at the community circle and draw natural and logical consequences (e.g. recently the kids wanted to make a ladder and found they had no hammers – we didn’t provide any more and they had to deal with the situation differently). It is to accuse children of doing difficult things on purpose. Rather, it is just an irresponsible and careless attitude on their part. We have no sanctions or punishments in place. The point is to make them understand that the thing in question is rather new to them right away because it costs money and those limited resources. Of course, we don’t expect children to understand this immediately – it’s a longer term process, and as children gradually grow up, they will continue indefinitely. The next thing I will only reach is the fact that children in our school are more and more likely to have various bruises or scrapes compared to regular schools, as they are active outdoors on a variety of surfaces or terrains. They use common “adult” tools (e.g. knives or saws), fire, play with sticks, move loads, climb trees, jump, roll on the ground, etc. 

Founders: we are Juraj and Lenka Mazak, parents of three sons, for whom we want something different than the current school system offers. We have devoted years to study, practice and experimentation in pedagogy and with respect for the experience and wisdom of those before us, we bring you the first free school in Košice. Lenka is a kindergarten teacher, primary school teacher for grades 1-4 and a special educator focused on remediation of learning and behavioral disorders by education and experience; she graduated with a PaedDr. degree from UNIPO in Prešov in 2007-2012. Her eight years of experience include positions as a primary school teacher, special educator in both primary school and counselling centre (CŠPP Bocatiova, Košice) and currently works as a consultant for the development of national standards at the Research Institute of Child Psychology and Pathopsychology. Juraj is a computer science engineer from TUKE, has additional pedagogical studies and 5 years of teaching experience in several schools, mostly French bilingual high school; he runs a family business 247.sk in IT and accounting. He is involved in education in many projects, he is a member of the Ťahanovce housing estate and also a member of the Education Commission of the City of Košice. Together with his wife, he founded and runs a community garden, which provides both indoor and garden space for the free school. His biography can be found briefly at www.mazak.sk. Our team consists of several members. More information about them can be found in Our Team. 🙂

We are not affiliated with any church, religious society or similar ideological grouping. We will provide children with information about religions and ideologies in accordance with current legislation as set out in the National Curriculum. Of course, we will, to the best of our knowledge and conscience, answer any questions they ask us – and you too, so please feel free to ask questions that are not already covered here, for example by emailing us at info@slobodnaskola.sk.

Democratic  type schools Summerhill/ Sudbury Valley describe books and publications Svoboda učení (original in EN / czech translate), Respektovat a být respektován (original by czech) or Summerhill (originál v AJ / český preklad). Video The Land and is dedicated to the concept of free play and unstructured environments. In the Slovak Republic, the Trnava group operated on these principles Svetoskola, in the Czech Republic (and in a significantly different legislative environment), for example, the Prague donumfelix.cz, Brno jezekbezklece.cz or Liberec svobodnaskola.org, others are in most major cities across Europe. Over the past years we have visited several of them, i.e. community, alternative or democratic schools in the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic, and collected know-how by reading and online. For more information about Free Democratic Schools, see for example inovativnivzdelavani.cz, seberizenevzdelavani.cz or in PDF forme on website Charles University in Prague. Many good books mention the web alternativni vzdelavani.cz. 

The reasons that lead us to the mixed age group are mentioned in the literature presented on our website in the section Inspiration. If you look at the everyday world, outside of education, people are not divided by age, but by interests, for example. In addition to better preparing children for real life, mixed age groups lead to minimizing problems associated with feelings of inferiority. Each child’s development is naturally uneven, and it is wrong to standardise and ‘align’ children in a group.In a mixed-age group, a child can try out skills with younger children that he or she has not yet mastered, and can learn more from older children in an area of interest to him or her. Older children are great motivators and both parties benefit from the experience of learning (with) each other, much like in the extended family or on the street during the holidays. Younger children naturally gravitate towards older children, not adults. The issue of mixed groups is explained very nicely and extensively in P. Gray’s book Freedom to Learn, among others.

It is possible for a child to transfer to any other school in the Slovak school system at any time without legal problems, for example to enter an eight-year grammar or secondary school according to his or her abilities. In our school, the child receives a proper report card as in any other primary school.

We are happy to be the home school for pupils studying abroad. From a tribal school’s perspective, it does not matter whether a child is studying abroad full-time or studying remotely; for us, it is the international student whose examination is at the parent’s request and does not have to be every year.

Our guides know the basic elements of Slovak sign language thanks to (and because of) my colleague Ľudo, who is deaf. They also have the training and experience to work with children with impaired communication skills or, for example, autism spectrum disorders. As each child is unique, we would be happy to discuss further information in a personal interview.

Our goal is to educate and shape our children into confident and responsible adults. We think that the traditional school system fails to achieve that, regardless of the language or country. Children can learn best when we let their imagination flourish and we have evidence of their cooperation even without having the same language. Our inspiration comes from foreign schools Summerhill / Sudbury which have been functioning this way for many years with great success. If your family or your child does not speak Slovak, we (both teachers and some children) can comfortably communicate in English as well, eventually in German. Bilingual families are welcome too, our founders are one of them (SK+EN). In need of more information you can email us (info@slobodnaskola.sk) or call us (+421 911 157 038).

We believe that a child learns in a stimulating environment with the participation of other children and adults through direct interaction. The mediation and significant reduction in the quality of peer contact through internet transmission fails to provide almost any educational elements and very few educational ones that would stem from direct personal experience with the world around us. We can provide you with expert support (support team) and guidance in education, you have the opportunity to take advantage of online interest group, and joint activities designed for our day pupils on the school premises or on joint trips. We consider it appropriate for children to spend time away from the computer, we will not run half day classes in front of a screen in the usual sense.

We have collected our inspiration from several sources and the most important ones, which have been published in books, can be found mentioned on our website in the Inspiration. Current scientific knowledge on brain, psychological and pedagogical research supports our model. After all, the successful educational models of the much-talked-about Nordic countries such as Finland, Iceland and Estonia are also moving towards freedom in education.

On the basis of the opinion of the State Pedagogical Institute ŠPÚ-340-958-1926/2021 dated 15.06.2021 the Ministry of Education issued the decision No.2021/12827:9-A2140 dated 22.06.2021, approving our “Application for experimental verification of free democratic education” with effect from 01.09.2021. The guarantor of the experimental verification is the University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra, Faculty of Education, Dražovská 4, Nitra, represented by doc. PaedDr. Gábor Pintes, PhD., we also cooperate with other universities (Faculty of Medicine of UPJŠ Košice, Faculty of Humanities of UTB Zlín Czech Republic). The expected completion date is 31.8.2030. The subject of the experimental validation project will be, in accordance with §14 of the Act No. 245/2008 Coll. on education and training: a) aims, methods and means of education; b) educational programmes of education fields or their parts; c) method of management of schools and school facilities. The details of the experimental validation project are well beyond the scope of the paper for the website (together with appendices about 160 pages), so we rather present their application in practice, e.g. in the form of the following frequently asked questions.

As of 1.9.2024, pupils educated according to special forms of education have been exempted from the experimental verification of self-directed education and are bound by the curriculum for a given grade and subject.

Collaboration starts with getting to know our inspiration, frequently asked questions and filling in electronic application form. If you have unanswered questions that you would like to discuss before enrolling, please contact us at info@slobodnaskola.sk, or 0911 157 038. Once you have completed the application form, we will send you details for payment of the registration fee and information on the next steps.

Please write to us, we will find a solution.

Please contact us at info@slobodnaskola.sk to discuss possible reciprocal remuneration. Thank you.