Population Reduction, Unification of Curriculum and Diversification of Financial Support of Secondary Education in the Czech Republic: The Situation in the Years 2006 – 2016

Introduction: The article focuses on the situation in the area of secondary education in the Czech Republic. Its aim is to reflect three topics: population reduction, unification of curriculum and diversification of financial support of secondary education in the Czech Republic in 2006 - 2016.

Methods: The results are underlined by available data from the national statistics. The data are collected annually and are accessible on the website of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. They contain the entire population of secondary schools, teachers and pupils. Analysis was provided with the use of SPSS, version 24.

Results: There is a reduction of vocational and apprentice schools, but at the same time we are increasing financial support to their fields of study. Under the 2004 law, each school has an individual school educational program, but realistically, we see that the curriculum at secondary school level of education rather standardises. On the labour market, we need graduates of vocational and apprentice schools, but we still strongly support grammar schools and other theoretically oriented schools, whose graduates are not motivated for manual professions.

Discussion: Closer analysis focused on reflection of selected trends in the area of secondary education is needed for the purposes of education policy and for planning future research studies in this area.

Limitations: Continuous development takes place in the field of education. All comparisons in the years 2006-2016 are therefore limited. The data were used in their original form, in some cases were not available and therefore they could not be included in the analysis.

Conclusions: Educational policy is very complicated, because education is difficult to control and it is based on freedom of access. Therefore, the most important target for the future is to stabilize the situation and be able to reflect maximum of factors influencing secondary education in our society. Although current trends clearly support lifelong learning and its unification, we should not forget the specific fields of apprentice and vocational schools, which are needed on the labour market.