Cross-Border Education: Students from Slovenia in Austrian Minority Schools

The article deals with increasing cross-border education, namely students from Slovenia attending upper-secondary level minority schools in Austrian Carinthia. We conducted interviews with school management and focus groups with students, who also completed a short questionnaire. Based on qualitative and quantitative data, we drew conclusions about the motives of students from Slovenia for enrolment in Slovene minority schools in Austria and about the consequences of their decision – their well-being, their knowledge and use of languages, their plans for the future – as well as in relation to their sense of Europeanness and their varying identities. Cross-border schooling turns out to be a success story. The outcome seems to be particularly favourable for the Slovene minority in Austrian Carinthia as it maintains the scope and quality of minority education, while also having the positive consequence of giving the members of the Slovene minority much greater exposure to the Slovene language, especially spoken language, with which they otherwise have less direct contact.