As Czechia faces renewed EU pressure over unequal schooling of Roma children, educators and advocates say inclusion requires more than just desegregation.
“We teach children, not subjects.”
As principal of her school in North Bohemia, Marie Gottfriedova reminds her fellow teachers of this regularly. For her, it is not just a slogan, but a philosophy that has guided her two decades of work to transform Trmice Elementary School into a model of inclusive education across the Czech Republic.
It is also an approach she believes has helped generations of students, including Roma children, find possibilities they might otherwise never have.
Gottfriedova recalls a former student at Trmice named Pepa, a Roma pupil with difficult circumstances. Pepa’s parents struggled to find work, gratefully accepted secondhand clothes from other families, and received financial support for their child’s field trips.
Despite these hardships, Pepa succeeded at Trmice and continued his education at a secondary technical school. Before he graduated, Gottfriedova says that he thanked her personally for her support.
“When Pepa was in ninth grade and was leaving our school, he came to me and said: ‘Mrs. Principal, it was because of you and the teachers here that I realized I want to live differently from my parents. Here at school, I realized that I can achieve a lot if I believe in myself and if I want to. And I am grateful to you and the teachers here for that.’ ”
Today, Pepa runs his own construction company and even sent his daughters to attend the Trmice school, where they also learn under the guidance of Principal Gottfriedova.
“When something like this works out, it really is a miracle,” she says. “And every school should help make such miracles possible.”
A Long History of Unequal Education
Discrimination in Czech schools has a long history. In the decades of communist rule following the Holocaust, as large numbers of Roma immigrated to what is now the Czech Republic from Slovakia, Roma children were directed into separate schools and classes, often based on assessments that did not adequately account for their language or cultural backgrounds. This separate but unequal treatment continued after 1989, even as democratic governments pledged to uphold international human rights standards.
In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic that Czechia had discriminated against Roma children by disproportionately placing them in “special schools” for pupils with disabilities. The government responded by formally ending the special school system – although often in reality simply changing the name to “practical schools.” Almost two decades later, Roma children remain overrepresented in these schools.
Estimates of the Roma population in the country range from 150,000 to almost 300,000 out of 10.9 million total residents. Yet, according to 2025 data from the National Pedagogical Institute, Roma students account for more than one-third of pupils at almost 130 elementary schools, including 46 schools where they make up more than half of the student body and 16 schools where they account for 90% or more.
David Tiser is a Romani rights activist and founder of a Romani theater school based in Prague, ARA Art. Tiser explained that segregation in schools was not resolved by the 2007 ruling because discrimination is deeply entrenched in many facets of Czech society, including housing.
“We, a lot of Roma people, live in socially excluded localities,” he tells Transitions, using the official term for neighborhoods affected by high rates of poverty and unemployment.
“That means that a lot of Roma go to segregated schools now, because before this, they were the same ‘special’ schools.”
Renewed European pressure has brought Czechia’s persistent school segregation back into focus. A June 2026 Council of Europe assessment found that segregation of Roma pupils had not diminished in recent years, despite reforms.
The European Commission has pursued infringement proceedings against the Czech government since 2014, with an additional formal warning issued in 2024, for failing to address segregated schools in violation of EU law. The country could end up paying millions of euros in sanctions.
For Tiser, however, the issue is not only a question of laws or court proceedings. He remembers experiencing the divide himself as a Roma student growing up in Plzen, a large city in western Bohemia.
“I was the only Romani student in my school, and in those days, every other Roma student whom I knew was in the special school,” he says.
That experience shaped his belief in the importance of education.
“I think that education is the most important thing for the Roma population in the Czech Republic,” he says.
Life in an Excluded Zone
But Tiser’s experience also points to a question that goes beyond where Roma children attend school: Does integration alone give them the support they need to succeed?
Dusan Salac, a young man who attended primary school in Mlada Boleslav, spoke of a Roma classmate who repeated grades in school three times, so that he only completed sixth grade despite having attended school for the legal minimum of nine years.
The school itself was not segregated. Salac and his classmate studied together in the mainstream curriculum. Yet, the experience illustrates a problem that can be harder to solve than simply putting Roma and non-Roma children in the same classroom.
Official data lists several “socially excluded localities” in Mlada Boleslav, a carmaking center of 48,000 in central Bohemia, including one near the city center where 99% of Roma residents have no more than a basic education, and four in five are unemployed, compared to less than 4% for the whole city.
Still, Salac said he has seen a change in the community in recent years, with some Roma residents working to improve their lives despite hardship.
“Now, many of the Roma students want to be better, and they are trying to make the whole Roma population look better,” he said.
Listening to Behavior
Academic performance is only one reason a child can struggle at school. For Lenka Felmancova – founder of Society For All (SOFA), an organization focused on inclusive education and mental health support for children – another part of the problem is how schools deal with emotional needs.
“What’s really missing is effective behavior management at schools,” Felmancova says. “We are seeing a rise in children who struggle with traumatic experiences and mental health, and the schools are not responsive to their needs.”
The Trmice elementary school faces many of the same difficulties, Gottfriedova says, from challenging behavior to difficult home situations. But she believes the solution begins with the teacher’s approach.
“I can see a pupil with problematic behavior as a troublemaker, as an enemy, as someone I have to fight and defeat,” she says. “But I can also look at that pupil as someone whose behavior is telling us something, who needs my support, whom I need to work with and listen to.”
She saw that distinction play out with Jakub, a Roma student who transferred to Trmice from another elementary school. He was confrontational from the start, Gottfriedova recalls, shouting at teachers, refusing to cooperate, and using vulgar language.
During one incident, a teacher brought him to Gottfriedova’s office because she no longer knew how to handle him. Jakub was so angry that he grabbed a chair and threw it across the room. At first, the boy refused to speak. Then Gottfriedova noticed tears running down his face.
“Something shifted in him, and we cautiously began talking,” she says.
It took nearly a year for Jakub’s behavior to settle down.
“What mattered was that we teachers pulled together, consulted one another, and shared what worked and what did not,” Gottfriedova adds.
When Jakub graduated, he was a very different student from the boy who had first arrived in her office.
“When he left our school, it was hard to say goodbye, but we were also happy that he had managed it so well. To this day, he attends various events the school organizes for the public or former pupils.”
Jakub’s story does not offer a formula for addressing behavioral difficulties, and Gottfriedova does not present it as one. But it illustrates what Felmancova means when she says that inclusion requires more than placing children in the same classroom.
‘The Silent Agreement’
If integration is only the start, another important question is how schools become segregated in the first place.
Czech parents may enroll their child in any school in the local “catchment area.” But according to education specialist Bob Kartous, the boundaries on a map do not always tell the whole story.
“In some towns, there’s a silent agreement between the school directors and residents that some of the schools in this town will be purposefully concentrated only for Roma children,” says Kartous, the vice chancellor at the University of Economics and Management in Prague.
He describes it as an informal understanding involving school leadership, the local authorities, and non-Roma parents who prefer their children to attend schools with few or no Roma pupils.
Tiser, the Roma activist, explains a similar pressure from the perspective of school principals. Some, he claims, have wanted to make their schools more inclusive but feared that non-Roma parents would withdraw their children and enroll them elsewhere.
“For example, I know some principals in elementary schools who wanted to invite more Roma students to attend their schools. But then the white parents said that they will leave for another school. So the principals don’t make any changes, because they are scared.”
He asks, “Who can integrate? Who has the power to do something about this?” and then answers: “The majority. But the majority doesn’t want change. For them, this [current] situation is very good.”
Kartous cites an example of this in practice in a lower-income part of the Prague 3 district, where he says one elementary school is known for enrolling a high number of Roma children. The school’s reputation, rather than any formal designation, can influence where parents choose to send their children.
“Everybody just knows,” Kartous says. “And the majority is satisfied with that.”
Felmancova also points to a demographic shift that could force local authorities to reconsider how their schools are organized. Czechia’s rapidly declining birth rate means that some municipalities will have to close schools as fewer and fewer students enroll.
As the number of children falls, Felmancova says, municipalities will be unable to maintain separate schools for different groups, making integration with Roma students a practical part of planning for the future.
“Many municipalities will face the decisions of how to rewrite their education strategies and about the closure of existing schools, and desegregation should be part of this thinking.”
Whether falling student numbers will change the ethnic composition of schools remains to be seen, although local officials in the northeastern Moravian-Silesian region say they have seen Roma pupils successfully integrate into mixed classes in larger schools where they transferred when predominantly Roma schools closed.
Teaching the Teachers
From managing difficult behavior to supporting children from diverse backgrounds, the challenges of inclusion require teachers to do more than deliver a curriculum, say the experts. Yet Czech current teacher training places little emphasis on preparing them for those realities.
A 2026 European Commission report on professional training in Czechia found that only 17% of the length of a bachelor’s degree in education is dedicated to practical training. Additionally, the report states that university education departments are highly autonomous, making it difficult to standardize teacher training curricula.
For Kartous, the adequate preparation of teachers depends on the school management.
“It all depends on the person or the principal,” he says. “In the Czech education system, the person who is the principal is absolutely crucial for everything.”
Gottfriedova sees the same dynamic at Trmice. Czech schools have a high degree of autonomy, she says, which makes the principal’s approach especially important.
At her school, that means thinking about inclusion as a whole, rather than just integration. She sees inclusion not just as a matter of simply giving teachers new techniques, but as a mindset and lifestyle.
“Above all, it is about the values we carry within ourselves,” Gottfriedova says. “Inclusion is not just about teaching methods or the ability to teach and impart knowledge. Inclusion has its roots in a person’s heart, in the teacher’s heart.”
Changing the Culture
But for some, like Bob Kartous and David Tiser, that mindset cannot be separated from the broader problem of racism and deeply entrenched discrimination across the Czech Republic.
“I’m convinced that this issue is mostly about the mentality of the people rather than the system,” Kartous says. “The education system is not the only problem. As you can see on social media, in the Czech Republic, racism and xenophobia are openly spoken.”
He argues that Roma people remain an especially visible target for xenophobic attitudes in Czech society, shaped by stereotypes that have developed over generations.
“Since the Holocaust really, Roma people were considered different. Roma people are considered as not adaptable. Roma people are considered as a problem,” he explains. “It is rooted somewhere, historically deeply, in the Czech mentality. I think that this is a continuing process that should be analyzed historically and culturally. “
Gottfriedova similarly sees integration as a question of social values, not only educational policy. She said Czech society still struggles to see individual well-being as connected to the well-being of the wider community, to grasp the concept that, in her words, “the better off the poorest person is, the better off we all are.”
To Tiser, that gap between public gestures of inclusion and everyday attitudes is also visible in a very different setting.
In November 2025, a group of young Roma footballers traveling by train was subjected to alleged racist abuse from football hooligans. Police later closed the case without identifying grounds for criminal prosecution.
Czech President Petr Pavel expressed outrage at the incident, invited the boys to Prague Castle, and in August 2026 he met some of the same young players at a football tournament for Roma youth.
Kartous saw the president’s appearance as an important public signal of solidarity with Roma children.
But Tiser views it differently. He says symbolic gestures matter, but argues that recognition of Roma people should also extend to occasions such as International Roma Day, 8 April, when the community can be represented and welcomed in its own right.
Pavel has in fact participated in International Roma Day events, including receiving Roma community leaders at Prague Castle in 2023. But Tiser’s broader point remains: representation can mean more than appearing beside Roma children only when they are the victims of racism. It can also mean recognizing Roma culture, identity, and place in Czech society when there is no crisis demanding attention.
“If [Pavel] visited the Roma community more often, it would symbolize that we are a part of society. We need the president here. We need his wife here. We need a lot of people who will show that we are part of society,” Tiser says. “And if they have no time for this, it means something.”
Ranee Brady was an editorial intern with Transitions this past summer. A graduate of Georgetown, she is now pursuing a master’s in international journalism at Cardiff University in Wales.
