Ukrainian teenagers slipping through the cracks
Going to a Czech school and getting a Czech education is one of the key routes by which young refugees from Ukraine can successfully integrate into Czech society. But Ukrainian teenagers are apparently far less integrated than their younger counterparts, with the vast majority of adolescents not attending secondary school.
While 92% of Ukrainian refugees of primary school age attend a Czech school, only 43% of adolescents of secondary school age do the same, according to the Voice of Ukrainians (Hlas Ukrajinců) survey carried out by the company PAQ Research, which has been monitoring the integration of Ukrainians in Czechia since three weeks after the war broke out.
The reasons are manifold. Czech secondary schools are currently dealing with the largest intake of pupils in years, which schools had not sufficiently prepared for despite demographers warning for years that the country was headed for this problem, with the result that even many Czech children are struggling to find a place at school. Adding thousands of Ukrainian refugees to the mix naturally only added to the crisis.
For Ukrainian teenagers, the problem is exacerbated by language difficulties, as 16-year-old Jaroslav, originally from Kharkiv, experienced.
"The admissions exams were a very difficult process for me. Even though I had high scores in mathematics, I did not do well in Czech. The Czech language test was conducted completely differently at each school. Some schools wanted precise punctuation, some wanted reading comprehension. In one interview, they even teased me about my grammar. I was completely broken by it, I experienced rejection a million times and felt like giving up."
Another factor is that the Ukrainian education system is structured differently to the Czech one and ends two years earlier. Therefore, many older pupils do not see it as worthwhile to study for two extra years to get their diploma when they can instead continue with online lessons from their home country, which many of them opt to do.
For some, education goes out the window altogether, as they have to work to support themselves or their families. This is the case for 17-year-old Daria, whose mother has health problems and doesn’t speak Czech or English well enough to work in the country.
"I'm completely independent, my mother and I live on what I earn working in a bar. I didn't go to online classes as I had to work and save money. Now I don't even go to work anymore, we live on my savings and I'm about to graduate. Then I will find another job."
The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs currently registers over 6,000 Ukrainian teenagers as being employed.
An extremely vulnerable group of teenagers are those who are completely alone in the country. In extreme cases, these adolescents are at increased risk of homelessness, like Sofia from Odessa.
"I came to the Czech Republic with my mother and younger brother, I attended and lived in a boarding school. Eventually, my mother decided to return to Ukraine, but I stayed here and I stopped doing well at school. With that, I lost the possibility of living at the boarding school."
Sofia stayed for a while at Hnízdo, a facility for unaccompanied minors in Prague run by the Salvation Army. But, says Dominik Ertner, the coordinator at the facility, they have a limited capacity of only 30 places and have to reject most people who apply to stay there. And he fears that things will get worse with the amendment to the so-called Lex Ukraina, the law governing the conditions of residence for refugees, which will come into effect on July 1.
"A big change will occur in the requirements for being granted the status of a so-called joint household. We expect that some young people will start to fall into homelessness as a result. In fact, this is already happening – people come to us who have been kicked out by their landlord due to the changes and ended up on the street."
Most of the time, these teenagers end up slipping through the cracks, staying in hostels or other forms of temporary accommodation, which leaves them at risk of exploitation and abuse. Dominika Kopčiková is from the organisation Post Bellum, which provides educational courses to Ukrainian teenagers.
"A man came to our adaptation centre for young Ukrainians and offered the girls the opportunity to earn extra money through prostitution. He knew there were people in a vulnerable situation and tried to take advantage of it. Unfortunately, that's how it works.”
