What are the main challenges children and teachers have to face in our schools due to an unprecedented inflow of Ukrainian children and youth into our educational system? Can we take this situation as an opportunity - will we meet the challenge? In Talking Economics, Katarína Stehlíková asks CERGE-EI's Daniel Münich these questions and more.
“The key issue of these days is how to spread or allocate Ukrainian families, mostly mothers, women with children of all ages, more uniformly across the country. Because if you compare the capacities in schools and pre-schools and compare them with the number of children, young people from Ukraine, you see huge discrepancies between where the capacities are and where Ukrainians are.”
Despite having experience with inclusion in schools, there is a shortage of teachers who know how to deal with heterogeneous classes.
“Language is the main barrier. How to teach children who don’t understand Czech or English at all might be a problem especially if teachers use the frontal method of teaching – simply speaking to children and children jointly repeating.”
Daniel Münich completed his PhD in Economics at CERGE-EI. He is a member of CERGE-EI Faculty and executive director of Think-Tank IDEA at CERGE-EI. Among many other consulting and advisory activities, Münich was appointed to Czech Prime Minister's Advisory Council, newly established in January 2022.
