Q&A: Sending kids back to Czech school after distance learning

We rounded up some of the more pressing questions from local parents and took them to the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, whose spokesperson Aneta Lednová addressed parents on the eve of sending their kids back to school after a lengthy period of quarantine (responses edited for length and clarity):

[As of] May 25, primary school pupils can return to schools voluntarily, classical teaching is not expected here, but teaching will continue in a similar way [to] home education. The only difference is that the children will not be supervised by their parents, but by pedagogical staff. Thus, distance education still remains the main form of teaching.

The Ministry of Education called on schools not to overburden pupils and their families and to focus mainly on core subjects in their teaching. The Ministry recommend[ed] taking into account the family situation of pupils and focusing on formative, motivational evaluation.

In general, if the teacher has doubts about whether the student is involved in distance learning activities, or the student does not submit assignments or does not respond to communication, the teacher needs to connect with the student or his parents and find out the reasons that prevent the pupil from distance learning, and together with his parents look for tools to help support him in distance learning.

The Ministry of Education has issued a decree and related methodological instruction, which allows schools to take into account both the academic performance until March 11 and the work of pupils and students in distance education and after their return from May 25. We recommend evaluating students primarily formatively, with feedback. Teachers should take into consideration the conditions that the pupil had at home during distance learning, as these can be much more difficult than in regular school teaching.

For pupils who stay at home, the school will continue to provide distance learning.

This is a premature question for now. Almost immediately after the beginning of the crisis, the Ministry came up with its specialized website nadalku.msmt.cz. Teachers can find resources, inspiration and tips on how to deal with distance learning here. We expect the site to continue to expand and to be available to teachers at any time in the future. We have also prepared a number of webinars on this topic for them.

The Czech Republic proceeded to resolve the pandemic situation very quickly. At the beginning of April, the Czech School Inspectorate contacted all schools with controlled telephone calls to find out how they managed to participate in distance education and what their problems are. Insufficient security with hardware has proven to be a major problem in some cases.

These are both shortcomings in technical equipment and the use of communication platforms, but last but not least, the support of teachers in terms of leading online teaching. Support will be provided free of charge to schools.

Even in distance learning, most children were in daily contact with their teacher and classmates. Returning to school in itself is not such a change. It is important to tell the children what hygiene measures they will expect at school, explain to them how important they are and motivate them to follow them.

These include, for example, the rules for washing hands, moving in corridors or keeping a safe distance from other classmates. The Ministry of Health, in cooperation with the State Institute of Public Health, prepared a number of educational materials for children, such as a comic book, which not only teachers but also parents could explain to children what happened in the last two months and what are the risks and especially prevention.

There is really a lot of it. For example, we can name a joint project of the Ministry of Education and Czech Television — the television show UčíTelka. Due to the situation and the deployment of a team of skilled teachers, the team of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and the entire CT staff, the original idea of the Minister of Education was implemented within five days and began to be broadcast live. Every day, on the ČT2 program, primary school pupils are taught through a television screen.

In addition to teaching on television, the Ministry of Education offers primary schools a lot of support for distance learning, for the assessment of distance students and for schools that are not in the field of using technologies for education (not only distance) also support “how to” in the form of webinars and applications. Tips, resources and inspiration for distance learning are also offered by the regular Special for the Support of Distance Learning, published by the National Pedagogical Institute.

A pupil cannot be included in a school group later than May 25, 2020. However, if she has already been included in the group, she may return. Participation in educational activities is optional. However, if a pupil is registered for personal participation in educational activities, in the event of her absence, the pupil’s legal representative should inform the school that the pupil will no longer continue to participate in educational activities. If the pupil returns to the group in which she was placed from the beginning after her absence, the required invariability of the group is still observed and this is therefore possible.

The digitization of education and the potential for remote learning are great topics that the current situation has opened up. We are pleased that many schools and teachers, who learned it as they went along, have mastered this way of teaching. The dark side of Czech education is certainly the overcrowding of educational programs. However, we have known about this problem for some time and will address it as part of the revision of the framework of educational programs.

What has definitely improved is the communication between the family and the student or the sharing of information between teachers, these are things that we should maintain and strengthen in the future as part of regular teaching. In connection with the current situation in the future, we also focused on supporting the formative (verbal) assessment of pupils, which is approached by more and more schools.