The Ministry of Education (MŠMT) wants to create a register of pupils, which is intended, among other things, to facilitate enrollment in kindergartens and primary schools and to enable electronic registration for secondary schools. The department is working on the creation of an information system to simplify school administration. The register, which will be part of the new education information system called eEdu, should be available in 2025 at the earliest.
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According to estimates, the creation of an information system should cost around 50 million crowns, announced Václav Jelen, senior director of the informatics, statistics and analysis section of the Ministry of Education and Culture.
"The pupil register is a modern view of how data should be organized in the Ministry of Education. One of its benefits is thus its contribution to e-Government as a whole, i.e. as a result to the citizen. The new register will combine information about a person from his first entry into the education system, and all important data characterizing his educational path will be recorded in it," Jelen told ČTK .
Easier enrollment of children in school
According to him, the emerging system will contain basic data about the pupil, which will be taken from the population register, and data about the studies of a specific individual. The register will be online and linked to school information systems. According to Jelen, this should reduce the administrative burden on schools and enable parents to enroll their children in educational facilities more easily.
The citizen's obligation to report the completion of studies to health insurance companies or to submit a study certificate to transport companies when processing an application for a fare discount could also be removed. According to Jelen, the advantage of the register will also be that the Ministry of Education and Culture will obtain more comprehensive data for more precise targeting of financial support to schools.
According to him, in the future, parents will be able to submit an application to enroll their child in school, for example, through the Citizen Portal. The decision on whether or not to be admitted to the school will also be available electronically, parents will receive it in their mailbox.
Application for secondary school: so far on paper and for two schools
Similarly, according to director Jelen, the new system will enable the digitalization of applications for secondary schools. "Thanks to this register, we will also find out how many applications were submitted, where and by whom, whether it makes sense to strengthen some fields more or, on the contrary, suppress them," said Jelen.
Now schoolchildren send applications to selected secondary schools in paper form.
The director of Cermat, Miroslav Krejčí, said earlier that the register of pupils will probably be a condition for a possible increase in the number of schools on the secondary school application. Now schoolchildren can apply for two schools.
"The issue of increasing the number of schools on the application form is very complicated and we expect the need for a massive intervention in the legislation. At the same time, it will represent a significant intervention in existing processes and customs," he said.
Cermat, which is a subsidized organization of the Ministry of Education, provides uniform entrance and matriculation exams.
The resort is preparing a register of schools as part of the eEdu system, which should be ready this year, according to Jelen. It is created by CCA Group for the Ministry of Education. In mid-December 2021, the office concluded a contract with it for the supply and operation of the system worth 27.4 million crowns, according to the register of contracts .
Teachers register?
Work is also underway to create a register of teachers, as noted by Jelen. Thanks to this register, according to the chief director, it will be clear which specializations are missing or will be missing, the office will have an overview of teachers and will be able to make more appropriate decisions based on the data.
According to an extraordinary survey of the Ministry of Education and Culture from 2019, there is a shortage of qualified teachers of mathematics or computer science. Some school organizations, e.g. EDUin, are calling for the creation of a register of teachers.
According to the earlier statement of the spokesperson of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Aneta Lednová, the eEdu project replaced the originally planned Departmental Information System (RIS). It was in the works for several years and was finally cancelled. According to the ministry, the development of RIS was supposed to cost up to 135 million crowns, of which roughly 80 percent was to be paid by the European Union and the rest by the state.