Czech "practical schools" won't close, petition is causing hysteria

News server Aktuálně.cz reports that tens of thousands of people have signed a petition against closing the "practical primary schools" that was delivered to representatives of the Czech Education Ministry last Friday. The actual situation is much less dramatic than the sensation stirred up around the alleged closure of the "practical primary schools". Both the Czech Government and the ministry say they are counting on such schools continuing to exist.

"This is not about closing the schools, but about transforming them. Within the framework of that transition, the current ‘practical primary schools’ should convert to regular education plans and, in some cases, to individual education plans where possible. Nevertheless, where the need for them remains, these schools will remain open as well," explains Martin Šimáček, director of the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion.

"If we can manage to sufficiently strengthen mainstream education, then we can move forward with closing the ‘practical primary schools’. However, it is not possible to close those schools in the current situation. That’s nonsense, no one has gotten that far with these considerations yet," Šimáček said.

"We have a problem with closing the ‘practical primary schools’ because the current situation is a convenient one. Thanks to special educational care, this country has one of the lowest levels of illiteracy," argues Jana Smetanová, director of the Polabiny Primary School in Pardubice and one of the authors of the petition.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas met a few days ago with Smetanová, with the chair of the Association of Special Needs Educators, Jiří Pilař (the other author of the petition), and with the director of a "practical primary school" in Brno, Gordon Brei. "The PM said the ‘practical primary schools’ will not be closed because that would be like ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’," Smetanová said.

Nečas has more or less confirmed this. When asked about his meeting with those critical of the idea of closing the schools, the PM said:  "This does not mean the 100 % closure of the ‘practical primary schools’ and orphanages, but their transformation."

"There will be a meeting soon to address which of the measures proposed will be able to be implemented now and by what deadline. During 2014, in collaboration with the ministries, work will begin on the related ‘Strategy for the Fight against Social Exclusion’, and that work may include those parts of the Strategy that were not fulfilled during the first period," the PM’s spokesperson said.

First Deputy Education Minister Jiří Nantl has made similar remarks about the Strategy:  "It turns out that in general it won’t be possible to fulfill it completely, particularly where questions of public schooling are concerned. The legislation for that has not yet been constructed."

The Czech Education Ministry, in collaboration with other institutions such as the Office of the Public Defender of Rights, the Czech School Inspection Authority, and the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion, has developed a so-called "Action Plan for Executing the Judgment in D.H. and Others versus the Czech Republic". Václav Zeman, a spokesperson for the Agency, explains that, "The priority of this document is to resolve equal access in relation to the European Court judgment. The establishment and closure of primary schools is not within the power of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, but is within the power of the establishing entities, and it is not included among the measures for implementing the D.H. versus Czech Republic judgment." The Action Plan is a response from the Czech Republic (five years later)
to the judgment handed down by the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg, which found in a case brought by children from Ostrava that
the country was discriminating against Romani children in the schools.

According to Nantl, it is necessary to realize that from a legal point of view, the "practical primary schools" are parallel to the mainstream primary schools. The only difference between these schools lies in their names. Formerly called the "special schools", such schools can add the term "practical" to their names, but are not required to do so.

The ‘Strategy for the Fight against Social Exclusion’ sparked hysteria in the Czech Republic and led to the petition against closing the "practical primary schools". That hysteria is playing into the hands of a strong domestic lobby to preserve the schools, thanks to the public’s lack of information and to the (very often) tendentious manipulation of public opinion taking place on this issue.

According to the Strategy, measures should be adopted which would, among other things, make it legislatively impossible to establish and operate primary schools for children with "light mental disabilities". The document counts on transforming the existing schools of that type by strengthening them so they can become mainstream primary schools.

"Education in a group established only for pupils with special educational needs should only be possible when individual integration is impossible, and only under conditions that are clearly established by law," the government-approved document reads. According to the Strategy, pupils who truly cannot be integrated into mainstream schools will not be forced into them at any cost.

According to Pavla Baxová and Klára Šimáčková Laurenčíková, who work with nonprofit organizations dedicated to inclusion, the Strategy simply confirms schools’ obligations per the School Act. "That document proposes many specific measures for strengthening mainstream primary schools – providing methodological instruction and education to teaching assistants, including school counseling centers in the standard financing mechanism for the schools, introducing a system of support measures, etc.," Baxová and Laurenčíková wrote in response to the petition.