News from the school management

Tuition fees refund - please be aware that applications for the tuition fees refunds for March, April and May for children in the preschool and primary school will end on 10th July 2020. Applications for refunds for children in secondary school will continue until the end of July. By mid July we will also publish the final amounts for the secondary school. We would like to thank all the parents who decided not to apply for these refunds. We will use these funds to manage this difficult situation.

We remain a British school - despite the two incredibly difficult external factors we would like to assure all parents that we have not lost focus to remain a British international school. Both the increase in teachers’ salaries and now the COVID-19 issue gave us some real headache. The economic impact already is and most likely still will be strong. It will certainly require some real and creative problem solving. Yet thanks to the support of some parents, extensive hours and some hard work from the management and the ability to adapt quickly to new situations demonstrated by most of the staff we remain focused not only to preserve but also to develop further a private british international school in Olomouc. 

Overall strategy responding to COVID-19 - we have conducted a quick research to collect some intelligence about the way other local schools as well as the other international schools in the country responded to the lockdown. Considering the local schools our response to the lockdown was well above the standard. The distance learning, communication, economic solutions and the overall response we had compares well to the way this situation was treated by economically much stronger international schools in Prague or Brno. Again we could confirm that for lower tuition fees we can deliver higher standards so our added value is strong. Especially the refund programme has been something extra the other international schools did not offer claiming that the distance learning can fully substitute the standard learning. 

Decision of the regional court about school meals - for the past three years our school has been challenging the decision of the regional authority before the court claiming on behalf of parents that it is unfair that children attending an international school in the Czech Republic are not eligible to receive funding for school meals as it is the case with all other compulsory school aged children in the country. Using explicit and formal wording stated in the School Act No. 561/2004 Col the court confirmed the decision of the regional authority not to register our canteen onto the national register and thus preventing the school meal production service from claiming funding from the state towards lunches. For this reason each lunch is about 15CZK more expensive than the same lunch delivered to the other schools in the city. In other words, if a child does not follow the national curriculum he or she is not eligible for his lunch to be subsidised by the state. The decision puts an end to our efforts to deal with this clear inequality when we were trying to argue that once a child participates in compulsory school education they should have the right to get the same funding for meals like any other child attending any other school. Taking this decision further to the highest court and eventually to the constitutional court that is actually the only court that can address the issue of inequality is not advised as we as a school are only representing parents and it is not our rights as a company but the rights of individual parents that are impacted here. The inequality exists at the level of each parent as a person who must pay a higher price for something that is subsidised elsewhere. If we would like to take this further we would need one individual parent or a group of parents who strongly feel their rights are being violated and prepare a referral to the eligible court. 

Organization of the next school year - we would like to assure parents that in the next school year we are not planning to combine any year groups into classes. In the primary school each class will be taught separately except the lower secondary where like this year we have a combined year groups Y7 and Y8 class. We also confirm that from the next school year there will be one extra Czech lesson per week compulsory for the children who are Czech nationals. The classes will run from 8.00am to 2.00pm but we are still working on the exact organization and how we will incorporate this extra Czech lesson into the curriculum. After School Club will run from 2.00pm to 4.30pm as usual and we will again offer a number of extra-curricular activities for the afternoon supported by our core staff.

Teachers in different classes - we are working hard to finalize the organization of the next school year. This year we have made some good progress and it seems that we will be in a position to announce all teachers earlier than in previous years. We have confirmed a new British teacher Ms Chloe Ritchie who is now well progressing through the appointment procedure and we have two other British teachers finalizing the recruitment process. We will inform you without delay about the final composition of our new team.

New playground - on 22nd June the regional authority approved our funding application to build a new playground next to the preschool building. From September children will enjoy a number of new play installations, swings and a new sand pit. The overall investment into this new programme developing gross motor skills will be 300 000 CZK in total. The playground will be used by preschool and primary school children too.

Opening hours during July and August for children from 1 to 6 years old - because of the situation we went through this spring we decided to extend preschool services also during the months of July and August to support working parents. At this stage we have it confirmed for the month of July that the preschool will remain open. We are still awaiting information from the Labour Ministry regarding the funding for this programme for August. It is very likely that we will remain open also in August but this will be confirmed soon. Again we will inform you as soon as we know for certain.

Flexi school is growing - we would like to congratulate all current, former and other external students who successfully completed distance learning courses as part of our flexi schooling programme. This programme has been very successful this year and will continue also into the next school year. If for whatever reason you had to withdraw your child from our school this year and he or she will re-enter the Czech system next school year, the flexi schooling programme is an excellent opportunity to continue at least partially developing your child's language as well as other subject specific skills in English. If you do not want your child to be bored in English lessons at his or her Czech school, please, do let us know. For September we are preparing a wider meeting and a presentation of all the options your child may have as part of this distance learning option we offer here at International School Olomouc.

Finally, we kindly ask all parents to check our website regularly as we will be publishing important news and updates also during summer holidays.