Globalisation, Education, Policy, and Curricula Issues: Globalization of Science Education at Primary Schools in Slovakia With Regard to Geography

This chapter deals with the education and knowledge of primary school pupils in Slovakia in the field of natural sciences with a special regard to geography. After the introductory section, we deal with the results of pupils in science literacy in the latest PISA 2022 testing. In the next section, we describe the current school curriculum reform of primary schools in Slovakia, specifically focusing on natural science subjects, including geography. From September 2023, the first 39 primary schools began to educate first-grade pupils according to the new curriculum, which will be compulsory for all primary schools from the school year 2026/2027 according to the new State Education Program, (SEP). In the following section, we analyze and discuss the new SEP using a SWOT analysis. The effort of the new SEP is to globalize education with the use of innovative methods so that it approaches the needs of the twenty-first century. However, for this to happen, it will be necessary to eliminate several shortcomings that the authors of the curriculum reform did not anticipate. In the section Policy Suggestions, we briefly present recommendations for improving the new SEP to achieve better results of primary school pupils in natural science subjects, especially geography.