6.10 Current debates and reforms
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Forthcoming policy development
In December 2025, the Czech Parliament started to discuss quite a significant revision of the Education Act (561/2004 Coll. Act of 24 September 2004 on pre-school, primary, secondary, higher vocational and other education. The proposal and amendments to it address the reduction of deferrals of compulsory school attendance, the abolition of preparatory classes, the abolition of grading for the first two school years or the restriction of repetition of years, but also address support positions, index funding or the introduction of a social educator position. The most controversial part is the transfer of funding of non-teaching staff to the founders of schools.
In 2017, the process of revision and updating of national curricular documents (Framework Educational Programmes, FEP) for primary and secondary education was started. Since January 2021 a so-called "small Revision" was agreed to add the digital competence into the Framework Educational Programmes with the voluntary mode of its implementation into the schools in the coming school years. In 2021 the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports together with the National Pedagogy institute established expert groups for the work on the FEP revisions and a clear timeline was agreed by the Ministry, although it is slightly delayed nevertheless. In 2024 New FEP should were created, in January 2025 presented and they should begin to be implemented from 2026 in primary schools.
Following the OECD Educational Highlights of 2016, the big issue in the Czech Republic in 2017 were low salaries of teachers, which are among the lowest within OECD countries. Since then the Government undertook several steps to raise the salaries of teachers. In 2023, the new Act on Pedagogical Workers being just discussed by the Parliament includes a provision granting overall amount budgeted for teachers at 130% of the average salary. Still, the criticism prevails that it would only cover teachers and not all pedagogical professions.
Since 2020 the Czech Republic has a new Education Strategy 2030+ based on wide expert and public evaluation and consultations process which started in 2019. Its implementation is now the main policy focus. See details in Eurydice article.
Ongoing debates
The debate about the revision of the Framework Educational Programmes is one of the most important in the educational field. But also other topic as the "middle tier" of governing or supporting the schools are in play. The Ministry of Education has piloted of the "Middle tier of support", evaluated the outcomes and decided about their national upscaling. The project is co-funded by the ESF. The central element of support is primarily intended for school principals and founders. Its main objective is to contribute to improving the quality of education through a comprehensive system of support for schools in managerial and non-pedagogical work.
The Partnership for Education 2030+ was created by the main networks of various non-governmental education providers and enablers. They work based on the collective impact principle and discuss models of the implementation of the Education Strategy 2030+, as there is common agreement on the goals. Two main working groups prepare their visions on the implementation of the wellbeing of pupils and students in Czech Education and about the middle tier of governance and pedagogical leadership in the Czech education system. The Ministry and state institutions took the auspices above these initiatives and became active partners and participatory experts in the process.