The school was established to meet the needs of the Rogaška Glassworks and admitted its first students in 1947, becoming an independent institution with its own glass furnace and glass grinding plant in 1953. In the decades that followed, the school has undergone many changes, including a sharp decline in young people's interest in glassmaking professions at the dawn of the 21st century and the bankruptcy of Steklarska Nova in 2009.

After the plant was abandoned, the Maribor Regional Museum acquired glassware from the sample rooms and production at the time for the museum's collection. These are various glass objects, mainly beer glassware by local and foreign designers, among which the works of Oskar Kogoj are also represented. Some of the acquisitions are on display in the open-air glass depot in the museum's Castle Café.