DOI: 10.11118/978-80-7509-922-8-0032

NOVÝ SYSTÉM FINANCOVÁNÍ REGIONÁLNÍHO ŠKOLSTVÍ

Hana Filipczyková

Financing of regional education in the Czech Republic is a current and often discussed topic. Education in the Czech Republic has long struggled with a constant level of underfunding; the situation began to improve only in 2018, when there was a sharp increase in expenditures from the state budget on education. Schools and school facilities are an important sector of the public sector and are therefore largely publicly funded. The financing of pre-school, primary, secondary and higher vocational schools, which fall into regional education, is regulated by the Education Act; This is multi-source funding, which aims to ensure that schools run smoothly. The system that was used to fund regional education until 2019 was a system of so-called normative funding per pupil. This system required the Ministry of Education to carry out mandatory data collection, which was provided by schools through mandatory reporting. According to this information, the Ministry of Education subsequently allocated funds for individual regions. The regional authorities subsequently distributed these funds with the help of their school departments to the individual schools that fell under them. With the change in the financing of regional education from 1 January 2021, there was a fundamental change in the financing and allocation of funds for schools and school facilities. The new funding system is based on a completely different principle, with school facilities now receiving money according to the scope of teaching and the hours taught. The purpose of the contribution is to evaluate the practical effects of the newly introduced changes in regional financing after the reform, to determine the advantages and disadvantages of the new financing system in comparison with the financing system before the reform. To achieve the goal, a qualitative research strategy is chosen, the method of data collection is a structured interview with open-ended questions. Interviews are subjected to analysis, on the basis of which predetermined statements are confirmed or refuted.

Keywords: regional education, education financing, regional education reform, case study, structured interwiew

pages: 32-41, online: 2023