OECD warns Czech Republic of rise in number of socially excluded schools

News server iDNES.cz reports that the Czech education system is more
selective than has previously been suspected. Non-Romani parents are not
enrolling their offspring into schools with high numbers of Romani children and
are choosing to send them to schools for the wealthy. The OECD is warning the
Czech Republic of a rise in the number of “socially excluded” schools.

In Prague, the primary schools on Havlíčkovo Square and Trojská Street are a
mere seven kilometers apart but represent completely separate worlds. The first
school mainly works with Romani children, while the second educates the
successful progeny of better-off families.

Two separate categories of primary school are developing in the Czech
Republic: Richer families seek out good schools, while the socially vulnerable
remain wherever schools are nearby. This kind of selectivity does not benefit
either collective of schoolchildren.

A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) is warning of the risks involved. "The choice of school can further
increase inequality among children,” the OECD warns.

In the “inferior” schools, pupils are all but predestined to fail
irrespective of their intelligence, because they are growing up in collectives
and families that don’t worried about whether the children are getting poor
grades, but must worry about whose father is in prison and which family doesn’t
have enough money for food. On the other hand, the wealthier pupils are living
as if in a greenhouse – they know of such dilemmas only from films, and this
impedes their own involvement in society once they are out of school.

The example of the school on Havlíčkovo náměstí shows that sometimes the mere
number of Romani pupils is enough to determine future enrollments. Once Romani
enrollment at that school reached one-third of its student body, wealthier
families stopped enrolling first-graders there, even though teachers at the
school know how to help all pupils achieve.

The director of the Trojská Primary School, Alois Pacík, views the situation
differently. In his view, care for gifted children is important. "Those are the
ones who will one day lead society. When a class has a larger number of troubled
pupils, the teachers don’t have enough time to support the talented ones,” he
notes.

In general, support for the gifted is not succeeding in the Czech Republic.
According to the Czech School Inspectorate, teachers were able to identify only
half of the country’s gifted children last year, overlooking the rest. The
question arises whether undiscovered smart pupils are attending the socially
excluded schools.

Czech Education Minister Petr Fiala is reportedly looking for a prescription
to address these problems and intends to present one in the fall. He has already
revealed that he will be providing support to regions where children’s academic
achievement is low and will be adding money to the budgets of small schools so
they can improve.