Prague, June 29 (CTK) – The coalition of the ruling Czech Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) and the opposition Mayors and Independents (STAN) wants to increase teachers’ salaries to 130 percent of the average salary its manifesto for the October 20-21 election it published today says.
The coalition, which was formed for the election, also wants to reduce bureaucracy at schools and to propose that experts from practice who have no pedagogic education should be allowed to teach.
The KDU-CSL and STAN leaders, Pavel Belobradek and Petr Gazdik, stressed they consider quality education a basic condition for the Czech Republic’ s future competitiveness.
“Without a quality, well-paid and satisfied teacher who also has a good position both in society and school, there cannot be any quality education,” Belobradek said.
“Without quality education, there can be no good science and research, there cannot be any high innovative capacity of our industry, there cannot be any competitiveness,” he added.
“This is why education is our priority,” Belobradek said.
“If the Czech Republic is not to become an open-air museumfor Asian economies in the future to which visitors will come to see how it worked in the 20th century, during the Industrial Revolution, we must considerably improve education and connect it with practice,” Gazdik said.
The coalition promises that if is in the government, it will increase the teachers’ salaries to 130 percent of the average salary by 2021.
It will also insist on experts from practice working at secondary schools and on increasing cooperation between companies and vocational training establishments.
At the education faculties, it wants to increase stress on modern trends so that their graduates could well prepare children for the challenges of the 21st century.
The coalition promises to provide for enough places in kindergartens for children over three and to support alternative forms of pre-school education such as forest kindergartens.
The two parties want to support language proficiency by screening films in the original language along with subtitles in a part of programmes for children.
The coalition says one billion crowns should be spent on the activities of local sports clubs within the budget allocation of taxes.
($1=23.141 crowns)
