Teachers in Slovakia were last week lamenting their lost status, and the forgotten national holiday that underlined it. Teachers' Day, celebrated during Communist rule, is no longer in the official calendar, though some primary schools continue to mark it informally.

"I miss it. I am not concerned about flowers and gifts but about the recognition of the importance of the teacher's profession, which finds itself in crisis at present," a lecturer from the Komensky University in Bratislava told a Slovakian newspaper. Teachers' wages are 60 per cent below the OECD average. Their salaries are nearly 30 per cent lower than the average for Slovakian workers as a whole. Many pensioners and unqualified people are to be found among the country's 100,000 teachers.