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Education Policies in the Czech Republic GWENDOLYN ALBERT In 1997, the de facto existence of ethnic segregation in the Czech school system was brought before the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic . This segregation was and is the product of a practice by which Roma children are disproportionately educated separately from other children according to a curriculum for the intellectually disabled, irrespective of their actual intellectual capacity. When this practice was first challenged, the government and most of those involved in administering education rejected the argument that this state of affairs constituted either discrimination or segregation. The Constitutional Court itself also found that the constitutional rights of the children involved had not been violated. They in turn appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). By the time the Czech state was defending itself before the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR, the government was arguing that a new Schools Act (Law No. 561/2004 Coll.), which took effect in 2005, had already addressed the circumstances which gave rise to the case of D.H. and Others v Czech Republic. The “special schools” into which Roma children had been disproportionately assigned were said to no longer exist. In 2007, the Court found that the Czech state had indirectly discriminated against the Roma applicants on the basis of their ethnicity with respect to their access to education and required the state to implement effective corrective measures. The Schools Act is still in effect as of this writing. It does not address the ethnic aspect of this de facto segregation. Rather, it has abolished the use of the term “special school” (zvláštní škola), as the schools so named had become stigmatized due to the publicity surrounding the legal challenge to the system. The new law has not affected the process by which Roma children are disproportionately assigned into education for the intellectually disabled, and the practice has been perpetuated for the same rea- 180 Ten Years After son it became so prevalent when special needs education was first introduced more than forty years ago: The higher per capita subsidies available from the state for the education of intellectually disabled children are an economic motivation for schools to teach a special needs curriculum, even to children without disabilities. Most of the children labeled by the system as in need of this special treatment have been Roma. A genuine effort to address the issue of ethnic segregation in education recently made it onto the agenda of the government during the time in office of Education Minister Ondřej Liška (from December 2007 until mid-2009). The D.H. judgment was announced in November 2007 and acknowledged by the government. Liška was motivated by his personal commitment to human rights, by the D.H. judgment, and by the activism of a coalition of domestic and international NGOs called “Together to School” (Společně do školy), which seeks an end to the segregation of Roma in the Czech schools.1 Liška met personally with the NGO coalition and appointed a woman from an NGO background, Klára Laurenčíková, to the position of Deputy Minister in charge of Social Programs in Education , tasking her with implementing the judgment. During his time in office , Liška’s primary accomplishment was to make sure those at the ministry who had designed the practices which had violated Roma children’s access to education would no longer be involved in the further design, implementation or oversight of special needs education in particular. This “house cleaning” has generated a backlash amongst a large contingent of special needs educators and ministry staff who passionately disagree with D.H. and its implications.2 Liška also initiated the ministry’s first 21stcentury attempts to gather data on the ethnic composition of school cohorts and the educational careers of Roma children and laid the groundwork for the establishment of a National Action Plan for Inclusive Education . In mid-2009, a vote of no confidence brought down the cabinet of which he was a member. Liška’s successor, Minister Miroslava Kopicová, was less committed to the desegregation issue. While she did write to the directors of schools for the intellectually disabled asking them to make sure the children they enrolled were genuinely in need of their services, she also downsized the resources and staff devoted to this issue. Nevertheless, due to the involvement of members of the Together to School coalition in several min1 See www.spolecnedoskoly.cz (Czech only...

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