“We will open the door for your studies at Harvard or Oxford” – this is a slogan that Czech private grammar schools have deployed to lure students. Apart from a wide selection of foreign languages, they have come up with a new product onto the Czech education market: the secondary-school leaving exams International Baccalaureate (IB) that is recognised by all prestigious foreign universities.
“For example Oxford and Harvard take the IB into account within their admissions proceedings,” said Peter Nitsche, head of the private eight-year grammar school Open Gate in Babice that received the certificate for international school-leaving exams this year as the first purely Czech grammar school. The first students at Open Gate will get in two years. The certificate granted by the Geneva-based organisation International Baccalaureate is only held by some 2,000 secondary schools in the world. In the Czech Republic it has been only offered by international private schools – like The English College in Prague, and Riverside School – attended by the children of diplomats and foreign entrepreneurs usually at high tuition fees.
Now Czech schools are starting to offer the international school-leaving exams too: Besides Open Gate, the eight-year grammar school Nový Porg of Václav Klaus Jr. also wants to attract students by means of the IB.
“We are getting ready for the certificate. we have to go through a difficult accreditation process within which the quality of our teachers, equipment of the school and textbooks will be examined,” Nový Porg director Martin Metelka said.
Students get ready for an international school-leaving exam during the final two years at school. Besides the Czech language, they are taught all other subjects in English. They can also opt for a Czech leaving exam. But unlike international secondary schools, Open Gate and Nový Porg are also available to children whose parents cannot afford to pay hundreds of thousands of crowns in school fees. Both schools offer scholarships to cover the cost of education for children who comply with difficult knowledge tests. However, getting a certificate for international secondary school-leaving exams is not cheap for schools, for they have to pay the teachers and, on top of that, dozens of thousands of crowns a year for the license. State-run secondary schools therefore cannot afford it.
“Between 1993 and 1996 we offered the international school-leaving exam in our school and the Education Ministry paid us contributions for that. But the financing was a problem in the end,” said Jiří Benda, head of the Prague-based grammar school Gymnázium Nad Alejí. But even with a Czech school-leaving exam, its graduates get to prestigious British and American universities without any problem.
“We prepare children for the international exams in English, FCE and CAE, that are accepted by all foreign schools,” Benda said.
And while a language school would charge as much as CZK 10,000 to prepare students for these exams, secondary schools do that for free within the educational plan. Similar language exams are offered by dozens of secondary schools in the Czech Republic.
“It is of course a way to attract children when they are deciding what school to choose,” said Renata Pauchová, head of the grammar school Gymnázium Christiana Dopplera where students can get a German language diploma.
The Czech-Spanish grammar school Budějovická offers students both Czech and Spanish secondary school-leaving exams.
