Less than a third of Czech teachers approve of the government’s measures in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey with 700 participating teachers was published by Člověk v tísni (People in Need) and conducted by the Focus Agency in cooperation with the JSNS educational program for the European People’s Party in January, CTK reports.
Half of the teachers in the Czech Republic don’t trust the government on the COVID-19 topic. Also, a quarter of participants feel that the current strict measures interfere with basic human rights. When it comes to the professional environment, nearly 96 percent of the teachers agree that their schools handled the pandemic situation well.
According to the survey results, a significant number of participants perceived the critical situation in the country as fabricated and mostly promoted by the government. They believe that the disease has the same effects as the flu. They are also sceptical about the vaccination process or even consider it to be dangerous. Organizers of the survey are afraid that those opinions might be inflicted upon children.
“This is especially true for young teachers under the age of 34. Almost forty percent of them consider the coronavirus epidemic to be an inflated media bubble because for them, COVID-19 is a common flu-like viral disease. They think that wearing masks regularly has negative health consequences. They do not want to be vaccinated because it is dangerous,” Karel Strachota, director of the JSNS program, explained.
Nearly every respondent stated that their school copes with the critical situation well. Besides, the satisfaction rate with the technical support increased by 60 percent compared to the last year’s result of 22 percent. However, only two percent of respondents agreed that the Ministry of Education provided them with enough support.
As for teaching, 16 percent of teachers described distance learning as unproblematic when nearly 75 percent agreed that distance learning is not sufficient for students.
