Prague, Feb 19 (CTK) – Cybersecurity is to be taught at Czech secondary schools as a special subject and children at primary schools are to undergo at least a basic course of a safe behaviour on the Internet as of September 2017, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) wrote on Friday.
Schools will thereby react to the current risk of cyber attacks, which even Czech PM Bohuslav Sobotka experienced recently. His private e-mail account was hacked in January.
However, the Czech Republic, as well as the rest of the world, is short of experts who are able to protect computer networks from hacking, HN says.
This is why primary and secondary school students must deal with computer security. This new subject is to be drafted this year, HN writes.
Two secondary vocational schools, one in Prague and the other in Brno, the second largest Czech town, are to prepare the new study line of cybersecurity as well as teaching material for the respective course at primary schools, on the basis of their agreement with the Education Ministry and representatives of the industry, regions and municipalities, HN writes.
“This year, we are to prepare the educational plan of the field and topics for primary schools. We expect the first children to study cybersecurity at secondary schools in September 2017,” Radko Sablik, director of the secondary school of industry in Prague-Smichov, one of the schools preparing the new curriculum, told the paper.
The graduates majoring in cybersecurity can look after computer networks of small firms. A part for them will definitely continue in their studies at universities, HN writes.
It adds that at present, cybersecurity can be studied at Brno’s Masaryk University and this programme is to be opened at the Czech Technical University (CVUT) in Prague.
Under the law on cybersecurity, which was approved last year, firms must hire experts to administer their networks.
Foreign surveys show that the labour market in this field will rise by 22 percent. But there are no similar studies in the Czech Republic, HN writes.
Nevertheless, some 12,000 experts in cybersecurity are expected to be demanded in the years to come, the sector agreement writes.
However, the schools need money to implement the project and get experts from practice involved in it, and this is why the promised talks at the Education Ministry should start as soon as possible, Sablik said.
