Let's start with a research question: what kind of changes in schooling brings political breakthroughs: 1848, 1918 and 1945? The paper specifically monitors the issues of the language of instruction of elementary and secondary schools, which were marked by the Austrian period when, after 1848, Slovenian gradually won the position of the language of instruction in more and more schools, attended by Slovenian pupils. Until the end of 1918, in central Slovenia (Carniola), southern Styria and south Carinthia, German language (elsewhere, Italian or Hungarian in Prekmurje region) retained a dominant or at least important position in school, including secondary schools. Indeed, the presentation of Slovenian education after 1918 opens the European educational dimension with a survey of the education of four countries with the Slovenian population: Yugoslavia, Italy, Austria and in Hungary.

How the political changes in 1918 reflected in the Slovenian education? In November 1918, the new state framework of the South Slav State enabled the Slovenian education of elementary and secondary schools and the emergence of German minority education where the German-speaking population lived. The issue of minority education was important for Slovenians and their minorities in the neighborhood states. Due to unfriendly conditions, Slovenians, especially from Italy, often migrated to Yugoslavia and replaced the laid-off German and Hungarian teachers there. For teachers in the Yugoslav part of Slovenia, the time after 1918 was that of the eagerly expected regulation of their professional status (they became civil servants), but they were much more dependent on the changing politics of liberal or Catholic orientation. The concept of differently oriented teacher associations connected through unions was brought only by 1926. Left-oriented teachers had problems irrespective of the political regime. Major content-related possibilities of education were brought about the development of secondary schools after the WW1, with real-gymnasiums and other schools, and an even greater one, the founding of the University of Ljubljana in 1919. Slovenian students, who were traditionally bound to university studies in German at the main cities of the Habsburg Monarchy, were thus able to study at home in their native language. The girls' options for higher education have expanded. In the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians (later named Yugoslavia), the University of Ljubljana joined the University of Belgrade and the University of Zagreb in 1919. Such Slovenian school progress is undoubtedly the result of cultural independence in the then Yugoslav state.

What was new in schools in the first years after 1945? Changes in education have already been announced during the WW2 with partisan schools in the area under the control of the resistance movement, in which the Communist Party dominated. The school was Slovenian, but also politically oriented. The article presents how the conceptual orientation of education after 1945 was determined by the politics, which monitored the work of teachers as well as parents and pupils. Closure of private schools, reducing attendance at religious education, which was initially possible in school premises, but in many ways obstructed, was part of the ideological struggle of the state authorities. Some pupils marked due to the actions or orientation of their parents as opposition of the regime orientation, have had a harder time in getting scholarships or further education. There was a lot of dependence on the representatives of the local authorities who were implementing the changing political demands of the central authorities. Greater sensitivity to the needs of the minority education of the Italians and the Hungarians is present in Slovenia after 1959, due to the migration of the German-speaking population during the war, and also after 1945/46, there was no longer a German minority education.

The paper presents, based on published literature, archives sources and pedagogical press, an overview of the subject matter, especially in the time of changes and expectations after world wars 1 and 2. Thereby, it analyzes particularly the changes in the position of the language of instruction, national and state education (politization of education) and the education of national minorities, and compares the Slovenian education in Austria-Hungary and the four countries that inherited the area inhabited by Slovenes (Yugoslavia, Italy, Austria, Hungary).

During all major transitions, Slovenian education experienced the time of risk and hope, promises of the future, when national borders, cultural and linguistic frameworks and social systems were changing. Comparison of the development of education before and after 1918, before and after 1945, as well as before and after 1991, means the transition from an old to a new state space. Changes after the First and Second World War were accompanied by the risks and hardships of the first post-war years, and the introduction of new views on education in new state frameworks. The changes of the rulers, the wider homeland (state) and patriotic holidays also raised the Slovene education into a new era. In spite of the changes, there is also a lot of continuity in the field of education: many of the same pupils and teachers have worked in schools at the transition from the old to the new state. Especially after the First World War, time was critical for the education of national minorities. Slovenes and Croats, as a national minority (similar to the German-speaking southern Tyrol) under Fascist Italy, gradually remained without primary education in their own language after 1926. Slovenians in the Republic of Austria in southern Carinthia and a small part of southern Styria lost the previous forms of bilingual education, similarly experienced by Slovene schoolchildren in Porabje in Hungary. But also the German minority in Yugoslavia (in Slovenia in the lingual island of Kočevje/Gottschee, Ljubljana and in three major towns in the lower Styria: Celje, Ptuj, Maribor), between the two wars, experienced education in very restrictive forms due to the authorities. The paper presents ways in which the social development in the Yugoslav national framework influenced the education, as well as the legislation with Slovenian special features.

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