YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

Education, training and learning mobility  89 As the results suggest, the home environment has a significant predictive value for students’ educational achievement. Although parental levels of education are a significant predictor of their children’s academic achieve- ment, the results of the Youth 2020 survey show that the differences in the perceived importance of a child’s certificate for parents and their ed- ucation are not significant. This is also why the role of public schooling as the ‘great equaliser’ remains essential. Even though public schooling plays a vital role in levelling the playing field for individuals, the home environment is a critical incentive in supporting young people’s educational achievement and related social mobility. 2.3  NON-FORMAL AND INFORMAL EDUCATION 2.3.1  NON-FORMAL FORMS OF EDUCATION Non-formal education is defined as all organised educational activities that a person has taken part in outside the established formal system. Non-formal education is characterised by the fact that it can also be pro- vided by institutions that are not educational in nature, and that the re- sults of non-formal education can be evaluated and lead to recognition (certification). Non-formal education is also sometimes referred to as ‘semi-structured learning’, but it does not lead to publicly valid (formal) education (Muršak, 2012). Respondents were asked about the forms of non-formal education they had received in the last 12 months. The Figure below compares the re- sponses from the 2010 and 2020 surveys.