Abstract

Since 2001, Slovenian vocational education has undergone major changes at the curricular and financing levels, particularly moving towards competence-based and open curricula and the decentralisation of responsibilities. Both tendencies have changed the role of the teacher, who has become a team worker with many new responsibilities in planning, assessment and evaluation of the pedagogical process. Reform measures are regularly evaluated, and research findings are an important source of information for reforms. In our secondary analysis of selected evaluations, we attempt to prove our thesis that the teacher’s autonomy has, despite this decentralisation, not increased in terms of better conditions for the students’ development. Instead, it has resulted in teachers becoming exhausted by paperwork, the purpose of which they do not realise due to poor training and difficult working conditions. The article proves that the potential positive outcomes of the reforms can be lost if reform instruments are abused for political and/or economic purposes, if the swiftness and content of the reforms are dictated by the European (financial) policies and particularistic political interests, and/or if the school is reformed according to the rules of the market.

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