Head of grammar schools association criticises system of accepting students into secondary education

The current system of accepting students who have finished elementary school and are moving onto high school study is badly set up, according to the chairwoman of the country’s association of grammar school headmasters (AŘG), Renata Schejbalová. In a Thursday interview, she told Czech Radio that it is lacking in flexibility and speed, noting that many students who are just finishing ninth grade have still not been informed about whether they have been accepted into one of the high schools they applied for. She said that the exact number of students who did not get into their chosen school will not be clear until September.

Mrs Schejbalová said that her association has long proposed a system wherein students could prioritise among the applications they send to schools that they wish to be accepted into. If they were to pass the entry exams into their first school of choice, they would then be accepted, thus opening up the spaces into the lower-priority schools for other students that would otherwise be held back until the student with the highest score makes a decision.

She said that the Ministry of Education is currently discussing a test run of this proposed system during next year’s entry examination period.

The current lack of spaces for students at high schools was also criticised by Czechia’s president, Petr Pavel, in an interview for news site Deník.cz earlier this week. The country’s head of state said that the government and regions failed to address the problem sufficiently and that it was necessary to come up with a solution that will fix the problem soon.