“If you want to provide quality education, you need diversity, not homogeneity.” From Page Not Found.
Inclusive education has been a mandatory element of Czech elementary education since 2016. The schools, however, along with teachers and parents, are still looking for the right ways of educating all kids equally well. The process cannot work without support from the state. This is clearly shown, among other things, by the example of schools that manage to copy the diversity of our society, developing the potential of all children – without differences.
At first sight, the elementary school and kindergarten on Graficka Street in the Smichov neighborhood of Prague feels like any other, traditional elementary school. The school was established in the early 19th century in response to the increasing number of children in Smichov, originally admitting only boys. Today, all types of children are educated in the school – not only in terms of their gender, but especially in terms of their needs – whatever those needs may be.
A Long Journey
This school has become a respected educational institution under the stewardship of its principal, Radmila Jedlickova. The moment you step inside the building, you notice that this elementary school is somewhat unusual. The corridor is lined with photos from weekly classes in the outdoors; on the ground floor, there’s a little book swap kiosk; the desks in the classrooms are arranged into nests as opposed to classical rows; and there are carpets in the back.
“Sometimes the kids need to get some rest,” says Jedlickova about the carpets. “They can get up at any time and go play on the carpet for a while, or close their eyes, or refresh their brains with different activities. This is especially helpful for kids with shorter attention spans, but all children use them.”
When Jedlickova first started working in the school administration in 2013, things were a bit different. The school on Graficka Street had a bad reputation: It was seen as a school for Roma children, meaning parents from the majority population did not want to send their kids there. The label is applied to Graficka to this day, even though the school has long been desegregated.
“I am proud of that – and not because I don’t want to educate Roma children. On the contrary, if you want to provide a quality education, you need a diverse composition, as opposed to homogeneous classes,” Jedlickova says, adding that inclusion is at the very core of how the school operates.
One School for All
At the Graficka school, you can find children from different social groups, of different nationalities, and with different needs. “Some principals only prefer a certain type of student: Czech kids without special needs. But here at Graficka, we prefer to copy real life. We are an ordinary school for all kids. We are preparing our children for the fact that people in society are not all the same,” Jedlickova says decisively as we sit down to talk in her cozily equipped principal’s office. She says the key element is a proactive attitude, which she herself practices and also requests from her colleagues.
Staff with many skills work at the school. Every class has an assistant for children with different needs. These include the autistic spectrum, ADD and ADHD, learning disabilities, developmental language disorder, and intellectual disability. Just as important, however, is the kids’ well-being, with just about everything taking place on a participatory basis, which the principal also promotes. “The kids are used to the fact that the door to my office is always open. They can come anytime to discuss whatever issue they want. I’m always here for them,” she says.
The journey to this point has, however, been a long one, and according to Jedlickova, it is still not over. “Since I started working here, I have always actively used all types of programs – both those offered by the Ministry of Education and those provided by different NGOs. We soon got the opportunity to travel to the UK and visit a school attended by children from a total of 98 countries of origin. We have repeated this visit three times, plus we got a chance to welcome their teachers over here, when they came for several week-long study visits,” Jedlickova says of a milestone in her professional career.
At the school in the UK, one staff member stops by the homes of families from socially less well-off backgrounds and drives their kids to school.
“We couldn’t do that over here, but I had the idea of hiring a lady who was working at a boarding house where mothers with kids lived, to talk to them. She would call parents and get them to send their kids to school,” laughs Jedlickova. According to her, that’s also what inclusive education can look like.
Attack and Snipe
The subject of inclusive education started to gain public traction around 2016, when the then-minister of education shepherded passage of legislation on introducing inclusive education into all Czech schools. The step provoked a rather unexpected backlash. Suddenly, inclusion turned into one of the hottest political issues.
For some time, the topic of inclusion in education divided Czech society. Parents were up in arms, teachers and principals as well. Each framed their arguments according to their special concerns: how and whether the schools would cope; what impact inclusive education would have on the students, on kids with special needs, on the quality of education; what support will have to be provided to teachers and their assistants.
This was accompanied by a lot of aggressive media content. Tabloids showed us where people such as the then-government plenipotentiary for human rights Klara Laurencikova shopped, and paparazzi followed her home, taking pictures of her in her free time. Never before had the otherwise overlooked issue of education been the focus of attention of both tabloid and other media. Some politicians were scaremongering, claiming that inclusion would destroy the Czech educational system, making quite outrageous statements about children. The passionate and often hostile conflicts left little room for sensitivity and expert reflection.
Five Minutes From Home
Radek and Anna began thinking about their son Petr’s education right after he was born. They soon learned that he was on the autistic spectrum. As he grew up, he was also diagnosed with ADHD and attention disorders.
The parents were slowly coming to realize that if they wanted to educate their child, it would cost them a lot of money, as well as a significant investment of time. Then someone recommended the elementary school on Graficka. It is located just five minutes from their home, but they would never have thought that this institution, with the reputation of a “Roma school” and a “school for troubled kids,” could be the right match for their son.
But it is not just a question of education. “The principal also managed to get us an assistant for the afternoon daycare. That was a relief. Petr can not only learn with the kids, but also play with them. And we have a little more time for work,” his mother Anna says.
There’s Still a Ways to Go
Lenka Felcmanova, chairwoman and co-founder of the NGO Society for All, originally known as the Czech Association of Experts on Inclusive Education, says that the perception of inclusion has changed over the last decade or so. And what’s most important: Schools have managed to implement the necessary measures so that they can start providing quality education to all children. However, there is still catching up to do.
“Without a doubt, the biggest success was when schools gained the legal right to support measures [for inclusive education], and guaranteed funding for them, back in 2016. Until then, schools had had the formal obligation to provide the necessary support to disadvantaged students but there was no clear definition of what exactly that was. Also, funding was only available for some groups of disadvantaged students,” Felcmanova explains.
“In 2010, 51 percent of students with disabilities were being educated in regular elementary schools – a figure that also included students with learning and behavioral disorders. So at that point state support lagged behind the real situation in schools,” she says. By 2016, when the legislation was amended, 65 percent of students with disabilities were being educated in non-specialized schools. “This year, the figure is 77 percent. However, inclusion should not be reduced to just the education of disadvantaged students in general schools. It is an overall approach to education, which takes into account the diverse, individual, educational needs of all children,” Felcmanova says.
Martina Zajickova has been teaching at Graficka for nine years. It was her first teaching job. She teaches first grade.
“I have accepted working with children with extra support as something automatic and natural,” she says, adding that at the beginning, things weren’t exactly easy. “They stood me up in front of a class, and I had to teach. Of course, back then I didn’t manage it the way I would have liked. But I was looking for a way of working differently, working better. Not everyone is like that. The first failure discourages them and they leave,” she says.
Crucially, the Graficka school provides teachers with the space they require for professional advancement, she adds.
The Price of Success
Some schools that have converted over to inclusive education have become very much in demand. It is not just because they educate special needs students, children of minorities or immigrants, or those from less stimulating environments. Often, parents who care about a respectful and individual approach in education also try to place their children there.
“Cooperating parents are of course important, but unless we want to change the school from inclusive to exclusive, we cannot select such parents and their children,” warns Jedlickova.
“Teaching motivated kids from motivated families is not what this work is about,” she says firmly.
Felcmanova from Society for All confirms the principal’s words. “When a school builds a reputation for being open toward individual needs, kids with more demanding needs from that area and sometimes even from a wider region are often directed to that school,” she says.
“The number of disadvantaged kids who go there can grow to such an extent that it starts turning into a school that is de facto segregated, unless the school administrators intervene,” she adds.
One aspect of inclusive schools is that there shouldn’t be too many kids with special needs in one school, or one classroom, she says.
The Need for More State Support
Little Petr’s class currently has more Ukrainian children than would be ideal. The principal at Graficka knows this. The open approach, promoted by the school, is reaching its limits. At fault, however, is not this elementary school but rather those whose principals refuse to accept disadvantaged kids. And so principal Jedlickova continues to look for solutions to new challenges.
In response to the arrival of Ukrainian refugees, she hired Ukrainian assistants and two teachers from war-torn Ukraine. Three of her pupils lost their fathers in the fighting. She tries to approach them with sensitivity and also give them space to work on their traumas and mental health issues. But if the school is to respond to new challenges and to the changing needs of children and their parents, it cannot be left to its own devices.
“The state could be helping us a lot more,” Jedlickova says. “The way it works today is that we’re using funds from time-limited projects for some positions. That creates a lot of uncertainty for me, for our staff, for the parents, and for the children.”
As Jedlickova and I look around Petr’s classroom – which resembles more a playroom full of books, sports equipment, musical instruments, and an abundance of tablets – I ask why she insists so much that kids with varying life experiences meet in the school’s classrooms, all given equal opportunities to develop their skills.
“It makes sense to me,” Jedlickova says after a short pause. And there’s an almost imperceptible smile on her face.
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Apolena Rychlikova is the editor-in-chief of Page Not Found, a Czech weekly magazine dedicated to entertaining, high-quality, innovative journalism, where this article originally appeared. Transitions’ Solutions Journalism program supported the writing of this article with support from the Evens Foundation. Translated by Matus Nemeth.
