Prague, Feb 12 (CTK) – More and more Czech parents formally change the place of residence of their children and they even pay to those who enable the change in order to make a public primary school with an excellent reputation accept their child as a local one, daily Pravo wrote on Friday.
Every Czech public primary school is obliged to preferentially accept children who live in its neighbourhood and those living closer to a different public school are admitted only if the school has free capacity for them. Parents do not pay anything for the school attendance of their kids.
School fees are paid only at private schools. Primary schools operated by churches may introduce fees as well, but they mostly do not do it.
One case concerning a false address of a child in Ceske Budejovice, south Bohemia, was even reported to the police, the paper writes.
Ceske Budejovice Deputy Mayor Petr Podhola said the school section of the municipal office handed an e-mail to him last week, in which the author openly writes that he will pay 10,000 crowns to anybody who provides his child with a formal permanent address thanks to which the child could attend a given primary school.
Podhola said he considers such a fraud outrageous. He added that he asked the police to check whether a crime was committed.
Pravo writes that the case is unlikely to be qualified as a crime.
Unless the law changes, similar cases will flourish, Podhola said.
A few years ago, Czech parents had problems to have their children accepted in kindergartens. The authorities were criticised for being unable to analyse demographic data and take the necessary steps in time.
Podhola told the paper that the definition of the home areas of individual primary schools is very problematic.
Even if the school managers found out that a child does not really live at its official permanent address, they have no right to reject this child, he said.
One of the schools in Ceske Budejovice decided that the names of the children who would start attending it after the summer holidays would be selected by lot because only about half of the applications could be met. The children who fail to be selected would have to attend one of two other schools that offer vacancies, the paper writes.
