Addressing Regional Disparities in the Czech Education System

The Commission aimed to address the problem of rising regional disparities in primary and lower secondary education of two most affected regions of the country and foster equality at the regional level among students coming from different backgrounds. The support was delivered through exchange of good practices focusing on in-class approach.

Context

The educational outcome gap is large between the socio-economic advantaged regions like Prague and the two least advantaged regions (Karlovarsky and Ustecky). The Czech Ministry of Education has identified as a key factor for success of inclusive education policies the development of educational activities that involve both schools and families together. The request for support is to have external expertise to analyse the situation of education among socially disadvantaged and to learn best practices on inclusion of socially disadvantaged children and especially of Roma children. The project aims to identify measures in the system of inclusive education (schools and families) where the cooperation between the institutions can be improved.

Support delivered

The project has been conducted by the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education. It started in October 2020 and ended in July 2021. The outcomes of the project have been: (i) to perform an objective analysis of the situation of inclusion of children at schools in the poorest regions (ii) to familiarize stakeholders with best practices from other EU countries, based on which to involve them in the design of inclusion tools to be implemented among schools and families, as well as to (iii) use the results of the analysis and the pilot testing to target the interventions of the 2021-207 ESIF in inclusive education, and to the prepare the National Strategy for Education 2021-2030.

Results achieved

The project supported performing the analysis of the situation in the two designated regions – Karlovarský and Ústecký. Through active stakeholder engagement, it delivered evidence of strengths of and challenges for implementing measures to promote more inclusive and equitable learning opportunities in the Czech Republic. Furthermore, the project made recommendations for priority actions through which to implement the necessary changes. It also provided concrete support including through designing a call for pilot project implementation and by contributing to the design of pilot projects with effective evaluation components.