There will be no place for Ukrainians. Schools in Prague are mostly full, but there will be problems elsewhere as well
According to Minister of Education Vladimír Balaš (STAN), 57,000 Ukrainian pupils applied to Czech schools. Although it is less than the original estimate, it is still clear that in some localities there will be no place in classes for children from Ukraine. For example, adaptation groups will be created in Prague 10, but experts and the ministry will avoid them, because they cannot replace standard teaching.
Five hundred Ukrainian children are waiting to see if they will be admitted to some of the elementary schools in Prague 10. Although it is not yet clear how many of them can be accommodated in this city of 100,000, it is already clear that not all of them will. For example, Solidarita Elementary School, which accepted 46 Ukrainian children, is still full.
“We waited several months for someone to come up with a solution. Since March, we have been dealing with the recruitment of applicants, we filled in Prague 10 as much as we could, we used the capacity to the maximum. And then we reached the point in April when a standstill was announced,” describes facility director Karin Marques. There is no room for hundreds more children in schools in Prague 10.
The town hall has therefore issued an instruction that children who do not receive will attend the so-called adaptation group. However, it does not replace full-fledged teaching. It is more about afternoon clubs, which are supposed to help with the integration of Ukrainian children into Czech society and prepare them for starting school. Currently, it primarily serves children who are not subject to compulsory school attendance three months after being granted a temporary protection visa. Only after this deadline.
It is not clear how many Ukrainian children in the Czech Republic will actually not be able to get to the Czech Republic on September 1. According to the Ministry of Education, however, the crisis scenario from the first half of the year, which predicted the arrival of 130,000 schoolchildren from Russia to the invaded Ukraine, will not happen. According to the Minister of Education Vladimír Balaš, around 57,000 Ukrainian pupils have enrolled in schools so far. According to him, the problem with the capacity of schools is mainly in the capital, including for Czech pupils. “It is not necessary to live only in and around Prague, but perhaps children will have a better chance of getting to school somewhere else,” Balaš told ČTK.
The total capacity in domestic primary schools should be sufficient. The problem, however, is that refugees are of course not evenly distributed across the country. “The capacities of the schools are sufficient in absolute terms, but it is very uneven regionally,” confirms PAQ Research analyst Štěpán Kment. In addition to Prague and its surroundings, capacities are also insufficient in the vicinity of Brno, Pilsen and Karlovy Vary.
Any congested regions will be dealt with by the state only in the autumn. At the beginning of September, hundreds to thousands of Ukrainian children may not be able to go to school, although compulsory school attendance will apply for them.
Chaos around registered children
The situation is confusing, especially because some parents tried to register their children during the summer, even at several schools. Other families decided to return to Ukraine during the summer and did not withdraw their child from school. On the other hand, more war refugees are coming to the Czech Republic.
Even the schools themselves admit that the situation is happening quickly. “Just today, a mother called to say that her daughter is to start a different primary school from September, but the family has moved to another part of the city and would like to enroll her daughter with us,” explains Eva Eliášová, deputy principal of ZŠ Dukelská in Benešov.
The program director of EDUin, Miroslav Hřebecký, admits that the state cannot find out in advance who will actually start where, but it should try harder to get the municipalities to prepare sufficient capacity and possibly propose a solution in case it is not enough.
In this regard, for example, so-called busing, the delivery of children by bus to regions with free capacity, or the construction of temporary schools, which would increase the capacity of schools, were already considered a few months ago.
“During the entire holiday season, I did not hear from a single municipality that it was preparing something like this. It is a matter for the founders, but who else but the Ministry of Education should motivate them to start doing something in this regard,” notes Hřebecký, who blames the state for he will only start coming up with a solution after the beginning of the school year.
PAQ Research analyst Karel Gargulák states that ensuring capacity is always a legal obligation of school founders. In the case of elementary schools, that is, municipalities. “The education system is decentralized. Everyone pretends that the school is responsible, then maybe the founder and then maybe the region. But the governing role should primarily be performed by the founder. But now, when there is no capacity, the region must take over, or the state, if the region he is not able to arrange. That’s how it should be. But the question is whether to coordinate,” adds Gargulák.
Collecting children is not realistic, says the Prague councilman
According to the Prague Councilor for Education Vít Šimral (Piráti), it is not possible to have a complete idea of where significant problems with capacity may occur, because not all the children who are registered in the capital city have yet arrived for registration.
“Some city districts already report rejected pupils due to capacity, so they are currently looking for additional internal reserves in theirs, for example increasing the number of children in classes under the exception to 34 pupils,” explains Šimral. At the same time, according to him, Prague is trying to increase the capacity of schools.
According to him, picking up children by bus is less realistic. “In the event that there is a need to take the children outside of Prague, it will certainly be difficult to find a free place in the nearest region where the children could be taken – because it is obvious that the delivery of individual pupils to the villages is very difficult in terms of time.” Good.
According to the councilor, the capacity of Central Bohemian schools in the vicinity of Prague is also exhausted. “Then it is up to us to consider whether it would even make sense to export pupils to, for example, the borders of the Central Bohemian Region with another region. It is therefore clear that the situation still requires time and that it is not possible to clearly communicate how the capacity of schools in the territory of Prague will be sufficient,” he adds Shimral.
For example, in Prague 7, in contrast to the tenth city district, it has so far managed to place all the children who signed up during special registrations. “Others are applying during the summer, so far we can take care of them, but the capacities of the schools are slowly reaching their limits,” says Hana Šišková, Prague 7 councilor for education and training.
According to the director of ZŠ Mikulovice Martin Lukeš, approximately eighty pupils from Ukraine were not placed in Pardubice schools. “An instruction has been issued which says that we are to find out the number of registered Ukrainian children in the village, and if they do not attend, then we are to start sending them notices that they have unexcused classes. So schools live in uncertainty as to what awaits them in September,” Lukeš claims.
It is not yet clear what the state’s approach will be to school-compulsory children who do not enroll in any school. According to the spokesman of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Jakub Augusta, in such a case, schools should first contact the parents and familiarize themselves with the functioning of the Czech education system.
“If the obvious reluctance of the parent to register for education or to involve him in education would persist, it would be a possible offense in the field of education,” obliges Augusta. Cases of children who would not start school would be further dealt with by the department of social and legal protection of children. After all, it also works in the case of Czech schoolchildren.