Photo: First school day on Husova, Brno. Credit: KK for Brno Daily.
Prague, Aug 27 (CTK) – The total number of pupils and students in primary and secondary schools in Czechia is expected to rise in the new school year compared to the previous one as a result of an increase in the number of secondary school students, the Education Ministry said a week before the new school year’s start.
In the 2023-2024 school year, 488,100 students are expected to attend secondary schools, which is is about 25,000 more than in the previous school year.
On the other hand, the number of primary school pupils will be lower than last year. Compared with the record-high 1,007,778 pupils in the last school year, there will probably be 2,378 fewer of them in the new school year, according to the ministry.
The figures include Ukrainian refugees.
According to the ministry’s estimates, 118,200 children are expected to attend the primary school first grade from September. In the 2022/2023 school year, the ministry registered 118,303 first-graders, the highest number in a decade, according to the statistics. A year earlier, in the 2021/2022 school year, the number of first-graders was around 108,000, like in the previous three years.
Last school year was also a record year in terms of the total number of pupils in all grades of primary school. As many as 1,007,778 children completed their compulsory education in primary schools, their number exceeding one million for the first time in the history of Czechia.
Pupils from among Ukrainian refugees, who began arriving in Czechia in the spring of 2022 in connection with the war in their homeland, also contributed to the record number of primary school pupils. Last year, nearly 40,000 Ukrainian asylum seekers attended primary schools, the ministry’s statistics show.
Demographic developments are behind the increase in the number of secondary school students. A strong population of children born around 2008 is now heading to secondary schools, and the number of young people entering secondary schools has thus been on the rise since 2019.
There are also Ukrainian asylum seekers studying at Czech secondary schools since the spring of 2022, with 3,368 of them studying at domestic secondary schools in April this year, according to the ministry’s data.
In the new school year starting from September, the ministry estimates that there will be 169,300 newly enrolled students in the first year of secondary schools, including multi-year grammar schools and boarding schools, and including refugees from Ukraine.
In the 2022/2023 school year, there were about 130,000 new enrolments in the first years of secondary schools, while the total number of secondary school students in all forms of education was then around 460,000.
The exact number of schoolchildren will be known in the autumn,said the Education Ministry spokeswoman Aneta Lednova. “By September 30, 2023, a regular statistical survey will be conducted in schools, which will also survey the pupils’ nationality,” she told CTK.
