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Talking PointHow well is Czech education system responding to the challenge of change?
The Czech education system has taken many strides in the last 20 years
since the fall of Communism but still shows some of the scars. Recent
governments and the Ministry of Education have stressed education as the
best route for helping the country compete in the future. But they have
been accused of paying just lip service to the required reforms.
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Current AffairsPlzeň law school scandal provokes nation-wide audit of over 300,000 university graduates
The law faculty at Plzeň university has found itself at the centre of a
huge scandal lately, after it emerged that law degrees had been awarded to
students after only a few months of study, while dozens of dissertations
had disappeared from its library. Is this evident corruption confined to
Plzeň? That’s what the Czech Education Ministry is trying to find out
with an audit – of every graduate of every Czech university since the
year 2000.
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Current AffairsThe School for Scandal: serious malpractice uncovered at Plzeň Law Faculty
Plagiarism, students’ work going missing, fast-track degrees completed
within months, and dead professors still on the lecture roster – these
are a few of the allegations to have been brought against Plzeň Law
Faculty in recent weeks. What started as a media investigation into
plagiarism claims, levied against a number of senior professors at the
faculty, has turned into a much larger scandal which implicates some of
this country’s best-known politicians.
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Current AffairsNGOs call for action in the face of persisting discrimination of Romany children in schools
Two years after a breakthrough verdict by the European Court for Human
Rights which denounced racial segregation in Czech schools, Romany children
still face widespread discrimination. That’s the conclusion of a group of
Czech NGOs that say the Czech Education Ministry has shown good will but
has introduced few practical measures to improve the situation.
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PanoramaTeaching in a changing society
For Panorama this week we go back to school, visiting a class of 12- and
13-year-olds at the grammar school in the old town of Havlíčkův Brod,
about a hundred kilometres south-east of Prague. We are here to find out
more about a pioneering teaching project that has been made possible thanks
to the enlightened attitude of the local town hall, which gave financial
support.
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Current AffairsElementary school using scientology teaching methods to open in Brno
Czech authorities have officially registered the first elementary school
that is to teach children according to the methods designed by L. Ron
Hubbard, the founder of the controversial Church of Scientology. The
school
management says the facility will be non-religious but experts fear that
the school become a recruitment centre for new members of the church. More
Current AffairsGovernment moves to stamp out homophobia in schools
Research conducted by the Czech charity People in Need two years ago
suggested that nearly three-quarters of school-age boys in this country had
a ‘negative attitude’ towards homosexuality. A recently published
European study indicates that that situation is not improving, and that
homophobia is still a widespread problem in Czech schools. In light of the
findings, the Czech government is producing a teachers’ manual to tackle
the problem. Earlier, I spoke to Lucie Otáhalová who is behind the
project. I asked her first about the scale of the problem faced:
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Current AffairsEducation minister says ten years needed to improve situation for Roma children in Czech schools
In 2007, the Czech Republic was condemned by the European Court of Human
Rights in Strasbourg for the way its education system treated the
country’s Romany minority. The court found that Roma children were
frequently discriminated against and sent to schools for the disabled, when
they did not show signs of learning difficulties. On International Roma Day
this Wednesday, the Czech Education Ministry released the results of two
studies it commissioned to determine how Roma children are faring in the
country’s schools now. I spoke to Education Minister Ondřej Liška and
asked him whether it wasn’t controversial to split Czech children into
Roma and non-Roma for the purposes of these studies:
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