Reform of regional school funding

New financing was embedded in the Amendment to the School Act in late 2018 and came into effect in January 2020. The measure is operational and runs as a regular practice.

Funding for public schools is determined for each individual legal entity: it is not possible to distinguish the exact salary amounts for individual fields of study provided by the school. For salaries for non-teaching staff it is not possible to separate the amount of funds intended for individual types of activities of the legal entity.

In 2021, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports worked intensively towards creating a 'transition bridge' between the normative-cost system of financing public secondary schools and conservatoires and the normative system of financing private and church schools. The transition of the new system of public schools funding to the normative system of private and church schools proved significantly more complicated and needed to be discussed with the representatives of private and church schools. The education system of public upper secondary schools and conservatoires was subject to a detailed analysis with regard to individual fields of study in line with Government Decree No 211/2010 Coll. as well as expenditures related to the financing of pedagogical and non-pedagogical working activities in these schools in 2020. The aim was to identify a systemically correct, justifiable, transparent and stable manner of determining unit expenditure per student as the basis for private and church school standards for 2021.

The financial requirements of the proposed solution are very high, particularly in the upper secondary school segment, and such a significant year-on-year financial impact had not been foreseen in the medium-term outlook of the State Budget chapter planned for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. This financial impact will now be spread over several years.

The state budget continues to allocate funds to the tertiary professional schools (VOŠ) on a normative basis according to the number of their students. The corresponding volume of funds to increase the salary tariffs of teaching staff in these schools is reflected in the "central" standards set by the MŠMT. The salary tariffs of all teaching staff were increased by 2% as of 1st January 2022 and the school headmasters received the corresponding amount of funding from the MŠMT depending on the number of teachers reported as of the end of September 2021.

The balance of the total amount of funds for the salary increase for teaching staff was transferred to the standards for the non-entitlement components of salary. Thus the MŠMT continued to create scope for school headmasters to financially motivate and reward excellent, pro-active and progressive teachers and other members of teaching staff.

The schools educating at least 10 Ukrainian students admitted in relation to the armed conflict in the territory of Ukraine were eligible for an extra funding of 25% of the allocation for non-teaching staff (the so-called adaptation coordinator).

Private school and school facility funding continued under the separate law governing subsidies for private schools, preschools, and school facilities. Direct educational costs, operating expenses, and development programmes were funded from the state budget. Founders covered capital expenditures and any difference between actual expenditures and the amount of subsidy provided from the state budget through their own budgets and other sources (primarily tuition fees). Statutory funding covered direct educational costs and operating expenses. The education ministry set annual non-investment expenditure norms for private schools (covering direct education costs and operating expenses), distributing funds through regional authorities.

Church schools and school facilities were financed directly by the education ministry according to the same normative as private schools. The subsidy excluded funds for non-state-owned property maintenance.

Higher vocational education funding retained the normative method from the state budget, which was in place until 2020, based on national and regional norms linked to student numbers. From 2020, however, the relevant normative for students are set centrally, directly by the education ministry, not by regional authorities.

In April 2024, the government decided to cap state-funded teaching hours at 95% of the original values. It was the first significant revision of the regional education financing system, which intended to address budgetary concerns by managing the increase in teaching positions while ensuring teacher salaries remain sufficient.

The amendment to Government Regulation No 110/2024 Coll. (amending Regulation No 123/2018 Coll.) capped state-funded teaching hours in public schools (effective 1 September 2024). Two additional amendments (October 2024) to the regional education financing system were approved:

Regulation of growth in the number of teaching hours or direct pedagogical activities financed from the national budget by adjusting the maximum number of school hours.

The proposal for a legislative measure will make it possible to respond flexibly through a government regulation to possible increases in the maximum number of hours, i.e. based on the actual scope of pedagogical workload reported by the school, by fixing or adjusting the number of teaching hours financed from the state budget to the given schools. The issuance of this government regulation is not intended to serve as a permanent solution, but as an ad hoc tool in times of need for extraordinary austerity measures.

Introduction of the possibility of indexing schools, or taking into account the difficulty of the education provided within the funding.

Since all students in the Czech Republic have the same right to access to quality education, it is proposed that the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports should have the possibility to determine correction coefficients to the normative for other non-investment expenses for public schools, and correction coefficients to the normative for personal allowances, rewards and target rewards according to the Labour Code, as well as mandatory levies.

At the same time, the government decree establishes the possibility to increase the maximum number of hours of teaching or direct pedagogical activities of a school psychologist or a school special pedagogue in public schools, based on educational needs.