Prague, May 15 (CTK) – Talented children lack sufficient support at schools in the Czech Republic, teachers are not methodically prepared to work with them and develop their abilities, experts agreed at a conference held in the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday.
The conference focused on the phenomenon of talented children was organised by the EDULAB educational organisation.
Only 0.25 percent of the money that the state allocates to children with special educational needs goes in support of talented children, Ivana Blazkova, from the Education Ministry’s special education section, said.
According to experts, there are about 10 percent of the talented and 2 percent of the extremely talented in every age-group, but the Czech education system often fails to reveal them.
The Education Ministry registers 1881 talented and 1116 extremely talented children at primary schools, according to its statistics, which is 0.2 percent, respectively 0.12 percent of all 962,108 school children.
Since September 2016, the Education Ministry has spent two billion crowns on the integration of both disabled and talented children and the state has supported particular talented children with five million crowns, Blazkova said.
The ministry would like to improve the situation by an amended directive on joint education of children at schools that is to be prepared by the end of the year. Higher support for talented children should be applied in practice as of September 2019, Blazkova added.
Eva Vondrakova, chairwoman of the Association for talent and high ability, said the same attention should be paid to the problems of talented children as to the disabled. Schools must give them a chance to develop their aptitudes and the state is to earmark more finances for this, she added.
Dana Prazakova, from the Czech School Inspection, shares this view. The Czech educational system does not sufficiently back up children with high ability, she said.
Schools can also use simplified applications for European subsidies in support of talented children, Prazakova added.
