Czech EdMin wants zero non-disabled children in "practical primary schools"

The Czech Education Ministry wants to prevent non-disabled, socially disadvantaged children from studying in the "practical primary schools" alongside children with mental disabilities. During the next two years, the ministry is preparing to introduce several measures into practice to prevent such enrollments. Those measures concern pupils’ records, the methods used to evaluate "practical primary school" candidates, and the establishment of preparatory classes at such schools. The ministry is responding to a five-year-old judgment from the European Court of Human Rights which found 18 Romani pupils had been unjustifiably enrolled into what were previously called "special schools" in the Czech Republic.

"This option has been a sort of ‘upside-down inclusion’, placing non-disabled children into classes intended for children with disabilities. We want to abolish this legislatively at the decree level," First Deputy Education Minister Jiří Nantl told journalists. Nantl said such "mixing" had been permitted in recent years.

The ministry wants to confront this issue in the future by, for example, testing children more frequently using new diagnostic tools in the counseling centers that decide whether a child genuinely cannot handle instruction in a regular school and must transfer into a "practical" one. Children already attending "practical primary schools" will also be regularly tested to make sure they are not enrolled there unnecessarily. Nantl said it should no longer happen that children will only be diagnosed prior to entering the first grade and then never again. According to earlier estimates by the ministry, the changes will cost between CZK 5 and 10 million.

In order for the ministry to have precise data on the number of pupils of various ethnicities attending the "practical primary schools", it will start collecting such data as of the start of autumn 2013. "As surprising as it may be…, the state has no such data at this moment. Our main aim is to obtain this data, be able to provide a relevant analysis of it, and to adopt the necessary measures on the basis of that data," Nantl said.

Nantl said aggregate data on ethnic origins will be collected which will in no way make it possible to identify the origins of individual pupils. The state will reportedly use this data to prove to Council of Europe bodies in the future that the school system is ethnically neutral, i.e., that no particular ethnic group is disadvantaged by it. Those measures ostensibly will not require any additional costs in principle.

Over the course of the next two years, preparatory classes at the "practical primary schools" and the so-called "diagnostic stays" by pupils at the "practical primary schools" will be abolished. Nursery schools set up inside the "practical primary schools" are often attended by preschoolers from socially excluded areas, where very few children attend classic nursery schools. In the preparatory classes, the children grow accustomed to the responsibilities associated with school attendance. "Children educated in preschool classes at the ‘practical primary schools’ could then go on to enroll in such primary schools for their mandatory education, which is undesirable," the ministry previously stated in working materials on the issue.

Research by the ombudsman’s office has shown that between 32 and 35 % of the pupils attending such schools today are Romani. The estimated number of Romani people in the population of the Czech Republic is between 1.4 and 2.8 %. According to conclusions published in August by the Czech School Inspection Authority, however, the proportion of Romani pupils educated as mentally disabled has fallen during the last two years. While young Romani people educated in programs for the disabled once comprised 35 % of such pupils, they now reportedly comprise only 26.4 % of such pupils.

In 2007, the above-mentioned judgment of the European Court of Human Rights found there was discrimination against young Romani people and that they were segregated in the Czech schools. Many organizations such as Amnesty International and the Open Society Fund have recently reported that the situation has not changed much during the past five years.

Representatives of the "practical primary schools", however, have protested the removal of pupils from them. They allege the children are not enrolled in these schools because of their Romani origin, but because troubled pupils will receive adequate support there.

Marcel Chládek, Shadow Education Minister for the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) is also convinced the "practical primary schools" do their work well. In his view, the government should rather focus on supporting preschool education, which he considers key to child development. His party is therefore proposing that the last year of nursery school be free of charge and mandatory for all children.