The new Education Act came into effect in 2005. It launched a reform requiring schools to design their own curricula.
Schools providing compulsory education are supposed to finish their school education programs (SEP) in this academic year and start teaching according to their SEPs in the 2007–08 academic year in first and sixth grades. School curricula must follow the national curricular framework that, in addition to subject goals, defines standards in the areas of six key competences — learning, communicative, social and personal, civic, work and problem-solving — and requires that schools carry out a self-evaluation.
The reform was modeled on advanced countries. However, in the Czech Republic, neither teachers nor parents understand the need for such a reform. Teachers don’t possess the skills for its implementation and can’t acquire them in such a short period. Training provided by the state is insufficient, teachers have no space in their schedule for their own education and aren’t paid for extra work. The situation is further complicated because parents don’t support the reform, as they’re afraid it will jeopardize preparations for secondary school entrance exams. These elements lead to many schools only formally accomplishing the task without changing teaching strategies. There’s a serious danger that the concept of reform will be discredited and the necessary changes will be postponed for a very long time.
–Exams on old curricula
The Education Act passed in 2004 calls for the standardization of the matriculation examination (ME). After finishing compulsory education, Czech students choose one track from either academic (gymnasia), secondary technical or vocational. Students from academic and secondary technical tracks finish their studies with a ME that allows them to apply to universities. Traditionally, the ME has consisted of a written and oral examination on Czech and one foreign language, and an oral examination on two eligible subjects. In accordance with the act, beginning in the 2007 academic year, all students must sit for a standardized test in Czech and foreign languages, and a third subject chosen from science, information technology, mathematics or civics. Throughout 2006, there was an ongoing debate about whether launching the standardized exam should be postponed due to several serious concerns, the greatest being that the exam isn’t coordinated with the curricular reform. That is, while new curricular frameworks are developed and implemented, the examination is designed according to old curricula. The syllabi for examinations in science and technology aren’t consistent with any curricular document, as there are no such subjects in the Czech system. There are large differences in curricula between individual secondary schools, and there’s no core that would be common to all branches and serve as a basis for a common (unbiased) examination. Students from technical and vocational tracks are seriously disadvantaged in comparison to academic students.
Unfortunately, decisions about the future of the ME are being determined on a political basis, rather than based on the input of an educational expert. As a consequence it may be that huge amounts of resources will be invested in the administration of this half-baked examination instead of in designing new curricula that would provide all secondary students with the general education foundation necessary for further learning and labor market success.
–Shortfalls in higher ed
In 2006, an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) expert group evaluated the system of Czech higher, or tertiary, education. Their findings and recommendations match those of Czech experts that have called — for a long time — for reforms in the Czech higher education system. OECD experts recommend significantly increasing the capacity of higher education institutions to provide high quality education and training at the bachelor degree level, to strengthen the public research funding system by putting emphasis on competitive project-based funding and to improve innovation, knowledge transfer and partnerships with business.
In the area of governance and quality assurance they recommend revising the legal framework for institutional governance; and focusing on quality monitoring and quality enhancement measures, they deem as necessary to clarify who will be responsible and to introduce mechanisms of internal and external assessment of education institutions in the system. In their review, experts put great emphasis on issues of accessibility and equity that are continuously neglected at all levels of the Czech educational system.
Experts recommended focusing on the rising aspirations of students from families with no history of higher education, strengthening coordination between secondary and higher education and introducing scholarships for students with both high need and high merit. For students identified as most “at-risk,” such as Romany students, experts recommend developing a plan for implementing a student loan program. Current representatives of the Ministry of Education and the academic community accepted the recommendations positively and showed their willingness to bring them into practice. Petr Matějů, a professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, expressed the intention of constituting an expert team and developing a white paper on Czech higher education within the next year. We will see how radical a change the Czech academic community is willing to accept. .