Czech ombudsman to study discrimination in the "practical schools"

The Czech Public Defender of Rights, Pavel Varvařovský (the ombudsman) will be investigating whether children of various ethnicities are receiving equal treatment in elementary education in the Czech Republic. Speaking to journalists today, the ombudsman said the research will focus on more than 50 elementary-level “practical schools” throughout the country. The findings of the research, which began this week, will be published by his office next May.

The Czech Republic is frequently criticized from abroad over discrimination in access to education. In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights found that Romani children had been disproportionately enrolled into what were once called the “special schools” (today the “elementary practical schools”). Human rights activists say that as many as 30 % of all Romani children in the Czech Republic are still being enrolled in such schools, often only because of their poor social backgrounds.

“Four years after the judgment, we want to verify whether the situation has changed. We want to determine what percentage of Romani children are being educated at schools designed for intellectually disabled persons,” said Michal Čermák of the ombudsman’s office, who said there is still a lack of research that is extensive enough to provide the relevant data.

“Some claim that in our – I will use the older term – ‘special schools’, the percentage of Romani children is so high that it cannot actually correspond to the criteria according to which children are meant to be enrolled in such a school, which is mental disability. That is why we are studying this,” said Varvařovský.

The ombudsman said his office randomly selected 52 schools in which to conduct the research out of a total number of 170. A certain number of schools per each region are represented in the sample. In Southern Moravia, for example, the research will be conducted in four schools.

Varvařovský said his office has already encountered a certain amount of commotion around the planned research. The problem is said to be that the research will be based on ethnic data. The ombudsman said no one need be concerned that this data might be abused, as it will be complete anonymous.

Researchers from the ombudsman’s office will visit classes in the selected schools and evaluate how many Romani pupils there are. “The second pillar of the research will be questionnaires completed by the teachers regarding how many Romani children they believe they have in their class,” Čermák said. “No one’s name will be linked with any of the numbers,” he added. According to ministerial decrees, as of this September the “practical schools” are no longer permitted to enrol children without a diagnosis of light mental disability.

Representatives of the nonprofit associations in the Together to School coalition (Společně do školy) have repeatedly criticized the situation of Romani pupils in the Czech schools, most recently in November. In their view, Romani children remain discriminated against and are still being unnecessarily sent to the “practical schools”.