Czech EdMin: Necessary measures for educating all children together, "not just Roma", adopted annually since the D.H. judgment

Czech Minister for Education, Youth and Sport ((MŠMT) Stanislav Štech presented the measures that the ministry has introduced recently in the area of equal access to education at an international conference in Prague on 14 November called “Together at School: Further Steps in the Education of Roma in the Czech Republic. “The Czech Republic has adopted necessary measures every year since the judgment in the D.H. and Others versus Czech Republic case so that the judgment can be fulfilled and so that all children, not just Romani ones, are educated together with the support they need,” he told conference-goers.

“Each administration of the ministry since 2009 has produced many analyses and background materials for amending the Education Act that have been used to establish support measures, and has provided for their financing according to the actual needs of children, pupils and students. Compulsory preschool education has now been introduced, which is a very important step toward developing the competencies necessary for life and increasing chances of school success,” the minister said.

Among those follow-up measures, according to the ministry, are the creation of a revisory body in the area of diagnosing and recommending support for the education of pupils with special educational needs, the expansion of the competencies of the Czech School Inspection in relation to educational counseling facilities, and the adaptation of the Framework Education Program for Primary Education so as to better create conditions for equal access to educational content for all pupils. Another such measure has been the introduction of the monitoring and recording of comparable data from the qualified estimates made as to the distribution of Romani pupils in education which will facilitate better comparisons and correlation of such data in the future.

In the year 2016, the ministry established its Expert Team for Common Education, which reviews the economic, expert and legal aspects of common education by bringing together representatives of educational associations, educational psychology counseling centers, nonprofit organizations, pedagogical departments of colleges and universities, and practicing experts. According to the ministry, these are all just the first steps in a process which, according to all expert findings, will take years to implement and, for Romani pupils especially, is a process for which legislative, organizational and pedagogical measures alone will not produce success.