A Foreigner in Czech School

This portal is determined mainly for Czech teachers, therefore the English version is only informative to make an elementary idea what teachers can find here.

This section is primarily for school principals, but may be also useful for teachers, coordinators of the education of foreigners, educational councelors or professionals who create the methodology of prevention. You will learn about the process of integration of foreigners into the Czech educational system, both on the state and school level and within other organizations.

The presence of pupils who have experienced migration into a foreign country, the migrant pupils, presents a lot of questions. How does the process of school admission of foreign pupils work? Which grade should they be enlisted into? How to plan their learning process? Who can provide support for pupils and teachers? How to teach these pupils Czech language and who will pay for it? How and when to evaluate the pupils? How to communicate with the children and parents if they don´t understand Czech? We will try to give you answers not only to these questions in this part of the portal.

Pre-school education
In this section you will find information about the education of foreign children in nursery schools. You will also find useful tips how to prepare for the presence of these children, how to ensure their (not only) language development and how to cooperate with their parents.

What to do before the child-foreigner is accepted to school?
The school should have a concept and strategy of working with foreigners (or pupils with a different mother tongue) ready before a foreign pupil starts attending. Pupils with different mother tongues require a specific type of support. You can find some help with finding the proper type of support in an area of the portal called what you should have prepared before a child-foreigner starts attending your school. You will also find downloads with information about the Czech education system and organization in several languages and advice about how to create the concept of integration.

Admission of a child-foreigner to your school
Here the issue of admission of a foreign student is analyzed step by step, from the admission procedure to handover of powers to other responsible persons –the coordinator of foreigners´education for example, or education councelor or teacher.

Grade placement
The admission of a child is logically followed by placement into an appropriate grade. This should be preceded by an evaluation of knowledge and skills of the child, especially in Czech language fluency. The pupil should be placed in an appropriate grade based not only on the results of the evaluation but also and even more importantly with regard to his/her age.

Compensatory plan and clasification
In the section called compensatory plan you will information and tips to create a compensatory plan, which is a suitable tool for systematic planning for education of foreigner pupils (or pupils with a different mother´s tongue). The compensatory plan can also serve as a criteria for clasification (which we dedicated a separate section). When planning progress within the compensatory plan we take into consideration not only the goals in particular subjects but also the fact that Czech is a second language for these pupils.

The process of integration
The integration process is a never-ending mutual effort to integrate a pupil in the educational process and moreover in their classes. In this part of the portal you will find tips for supportive tools for succesful integration. Among the simplest is establishing a coordinator or a patron (classmate). We dedicated a separate section to the topic of support in the form of an assistant teacher.

Czech courses
The intergration of a pupil is impossible without a systematic support of learning the Czech language. It is necessary for the initial integration to organize Czech courses as a foreign language. You will learn how to finance these and get to know some examples of courses realised in the past in the section dedicated to Czech courses.

The school climate
An inclusive school respects the needs of its pupils, which means that the school climate should be welcoming to all its pupils, including the foreign pupils. You will find some examples of best practices and guidelines how to prevent xenophobia and racism here.

High school
Here you can find useful information about admission process, individual education plans and high school leaving examination of Czech language (maturita). The issue of recognition of education is discussed in a separate section. The last two parts of this section discuss the cooperation with the parents and examples of practice abroad.