Czech Republic wins EU award for education

Two secondary schools in the Czech Republic have won a quality award for their excellent educational projects, organized as a part of the European Union's Leonardo da Vinci program. The projects were among the top twenty in Europe, and were awarded a certificate of quality at an international conference in Norway last month.

Photo: David Vaughan

Seventeen-year-old Lucie from a Czech town of Horky nad Jizerou spent three weeks working in an Austrian vineyard. This traineeship program was organized by the local Secondary Vocational School of Agriculture for 28 of their students.

This is just one of many similar projects sponsored by the educational program called Leonardo da Vinci, set up by the EU in 1995. The main goal is to promote international vocational training exchanges and other cross-border projects, to help improve the quality of education and training systems, and a genuinely competitive European labor market.

So-called 'mobility' projects form the main part of the Leonardo da Vinci agenda. Iva Tatarkova, the director of the local branch of this EU program, talks about the scope of projects included in this category:

"There are 'mobilities' as placements and as exchanges. Placements are for young people in initial vocational training, for university students, for young workers, and for graduates. Concerning these exchange projects, they are for teachers and trainers. During the exchange projects they can exchange knowledge and information about the educational system in each participating country, and they can learn how cooperation between educational institutions and enterprises is organized in different countries."

Photo: European Commission

The first Leonardo da Vinci awards were presented earlier this year in Oslo. And the success of the Czech Republic was quite remarkable. While two Czech schools were chosen among the best twenty projects, one of them, the Secondary Vocational School of Agriculture in Horky nad Jizerou, placed third in the overall competition, behind projects in Hungary and Belgium. This project was distinguished as outstanding in the way participants were selected, to include not just best students, but also students with specific learning difficulties, from socially disadvantaged families, and from children's homes.

Ms. Tatarkova is very proud of this achievement, claiming that this award testifies about the quality of the education system in this country, which is now being recognized at the European level as well.

Such success in Czech schools also acts as an incentive for other local schools to start participating in similar projects. Iva Tatarkova again:

"The interest to participate in Leonardo da Vinci program, and the interest to benefit from this program, is growing every year. Of course, not every project can be evaluated, and not every project can obtain financial support, but fortunately the budget for the mobility project in the Czech Republic has been doubled in the last year since the country became a member of the EU. For instance, last year nearly 2,500 people benefited from the program and traveled abroad in order to obtain trans-national experience.

"Concerning this year, in the Czech Republic, the national agency has nearly €3 million for new mobility projects, and under our calculation, over 3,000 people should benefit from the Leonardo da Vinci program this year."