Czech Republic

Operation of the portal is covered by the NÚV budget, whose funding is provided by the Ministry of Education.

Initial development of the instrument was financed by public funding using EU co-financing. The total cost of the project VIP Kariéra II (2010-2015) was 58 million CZK (EU co-financing 85%). This funding was used for setting the scheme, datasets, portal infrastructure system, distant and on-line learning, counselling, etc. Operational costs of the portal and additional services are financed through the annual NÚV budget, which is funded by the Ministry of Education. Funding for school career counselling system still needs to be found.

Funding for these regional schemes is provided by the regional authority budgets, as regional authorities are responsible for the running and performance of the secondary level of education. The amount of finance allocated differs from region to region, depending on the size of the region and the number of fields of education eligible for the support. The total finance for the scholarship schemes varies between 1.5-3 million CZK per year and per region.

Most of Sector Councils' operations so far have been in design and amendments of vocational qualification standards (National Register of Qualifications - NSK) and National System of Professions (NSP). There is a funding allocated from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports budget for running the NSK. However, this is dedicated to the executive body responsible for NSK (Národní ústav pro vzdělávání - National Institute for Education), and some resources are partly channelled to Sector Councils. There is an initiative of the Confederation of Industry (leading partner of the Sector Councils network) that is proposing to include Sector Councils into creation of 2 new subsystems: Skills 4.0 (Dovednosti 4.0) and Competence pyramids (Kompetenční pyramidy). The Skills 4.0 subsystem would be a process where employers (represented by Sector Councils) together with academics, science and R&D representative, define future skills, incorporate them into the Central Database of Competences and assign them to (often new) professions and qualifications. The Competence pyramids subsystem would be a tool/mechanism for influencing the educational system and curricula to ensure graduates have new skills, often multisectoral and transferable. There is a need to identify new funding for these activities.

The first and second phase of the NSK (NSK I and NSK II) were financed by public funding using EU co-financing (ESF). The total costs for NSK II (2009-2015) reached 580 mil CZK (EU co-financing 85%, i.e. 493 mil CZK). This funding was used for setting the system, methodology, design of qualification standards, piloting etc. Currently, running costs for NSK amendments are ensured by the annual budget of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The implementation (retraining, testing, certification, authorisation) have no specific budget, however, especially retraining can be funded by other public financing schemes, e.g. via retraining programmes run by Labour Offices.

The funding allocated in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports budget - for the year 2017 total 34 mil CZK- is available to ensure running of the NSK system. For future operations, there is a need to ensure funding for additional activities, particularly because of the new required skills arising due to Industry 4.0 / Skills 4.0 trends.
The implementation (retraining, testing, certification, authorisation) have no specific budget, however, retraining especially can be funded by other public financing schemes, mainly via retraining programmes run by Labour Offices (often ESF co-financed).