Czech class in Germany: six bilingual schools to be established in the Bavarian border area
Bavaria wants to deepen its neighbourly relationship with Czechia, and therefore intends to improve the teaching of the Czech language in the region around their shared border. Six German-Czech bilingual schools are to be established in the next school year.
The intention to establish bilingual schools in the border area was announced in July this year by the Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder during a meeting with the Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala in the Bavarian city of Cham.
"Six ‘continuation’ schools in the Lower Bavaria, Upper Franconia and Upper Palatinate districts will become beacons and centres of Bavarian-Czech friendship … Languages build bridges to other countries, cultures and people's hearts. Especially in the border area, people from Bavaria and Czechia feel a deep connection. Fulfilling and preserving the Bavarian-Czech friendship is an important task especially for young people," said the Bavarian Ministry of Education Anna Stolz.
By promoting knowledge of the Czech language in Germany, the goal is to improve intercultural skills, enable interactions between Bavarian and Czech students, and broaden job prospects in the border region.
Czech is currently offered as a foreign language in a number of Bavarian secondary schools. According to Bavarian government statistics from the end of 2022, in the 2021/2022 school year, Czech was offered as a foreign language in seventeen Realschulen in the border region. In 2023, for the first time in the history of Bavaria, a high school graduation exam in Czech as a foreign language was held at a grammar school in Munich.
