School education in the Czech Republic

School governance in the Czech Republic is fairly decentralised and involves three levels of administration: the central government, regions and municipalities. This follows a major reform of public administration in 2002 which strengthened self-government. Each region is the organising body of secondary schools, while municipalities take responsibility for pre-primary and basic schools. The content of instruction in the Czech Republic is established at two levels as dictated by the 2005 Education Act, the main legislative document governing education. At the central level, the Ministry determines Framework Education Programmes (FEPs) for each educational area within pre-primary, basic and secondary education. In agreement with such framework, schools further develop School Education Programmes (SEPs), which consist of the operationalisation of FEPs to fit the context of individual schools. This reflects increased autonomy for schools from an education system which, prior to 1989, was characterised by a strong central direction and the standardisation of processes. Student learning outcomes in the Czech Republic are around or slightly below the OECD average but have shown a serious decline in recent years. There are also concerns about strong social selectivity and inequities in the education system, including misplacement of some students in special schools.