Partnership for Education 2030+
Partnership for Education 2030+ is an independent non-profit institute which aims to significantly improve the culture of collaboration between actors in education in the Czech Republic. The initiative was established in June 2020 when the top representatives of seven Czech platforms in education signed the text of the Memorandum on the Partnership for Education 2030+. In the same year the Czech Ministry of Education and the Czech School Inspectorate joined the Partnership 2030+ for Education as consulting partners.
Our aim is to significantly improve the culture of collaboration between actors in education in the Czech Republic. We want to create the conditions for different independent organisations working in education to be able to coordinate their activities and achieve a collective impact on making pupils and students in the Czech Republic better learners, happier and equally likely to succeed, regardless of the region they live in and their background.
Our aim follows the Czech Education Policy Strategy 2030+ (a key document for the development of the education system of the Czech Republic in the decade 2020 – 2030, which was approved by the Czech government in 2020). We explicitly focus on supporting the achievement of the two main goals of the Czech Education Policy Strategy 2030+. We agree that education needs to focus more on competences so that people can be successful in their personal, civic and professional lives, and that inequalities in the Czech education system need to be reduced. The Czech Republic has one of the most autonomous and decentralised education systems in the world (OECD, 2018:48), with a huge number of independent actors (10,000 schools, 2,500 education authorities – mainly municipalities), thousands of non-governmental non-profit organizations, including those active in non-formal education, dozens of universities, etc.). These entities are not centrally managed by anyone, which is fine if we want to develop democracy and civil society. However, these organisations need to learn to work together and coordinate their activities voluntarily. There is still a lot of room for development in this area, and there is also a lack of knowledge on how to approach it without limiting the freedom and autonomy of the individual actors.
We focus on two specific long-term goals, namely to jointly design, pilot and put into practice the following in the Czech Republic:
- An effective system of administration, leadership and support for local schools, capable of improving children’s educational outcomes and increasing equal opportunities in education (so called local school administration);
- A system of measures leading to the healthy physical and psychosocial development of children and young people and the realisation of their potential in personal, professional and civic life (wellbeing – with an emphasis on coordinating support for the most vulnerable children).
In the first year of the Partnership 2030+ (June 2020 – August 2021) we managed to set up supporting processes for the functioning of the cooperation according to the principles of collective impact, with two working groups of experts generating visions and proposals for the specific objectives of the Partnership 2030+. We involved individual representatives of the affiliated organisations in the consultation and also started consultation processes on the relevant thematic areas within their organisational structures.
In the second year of the Partnership 2030+ (September 2021 – August 2022) we finalised the indicators of collective impact and developed a coordinated action plan based on voluntary commitments of the partner organisations. We also addressed practical challenges related to launching the implementation of our proposals in the themes addressed: In the Local School Administration working group we were preparing to pilot District Partnerships for Education 2030+ in the regions, and in the area of wellbeing we were preparing a campaign to communicate the importance of this topic to different target groups in education.
In the third year of the Partnership 2030+ (September 2022 – December 2023) an independent institute Partnership for Education 2030+ was founded by its parent organisation SKAV. All seven Partnership 2030+ project founders are now members of the independent Partnership 2030+ institute council. The first District Partnerships for Education 2030+ were established to be piloted in Brno – venkov, Šumperk, Jeseník and Pelhřimov districts. Working group Local School Administration has also finalised their proposal “How to strengthen the leadership and support system of nurseries and primary & secondary schools”. This proposal went through a wide consultation and feedback process that ended in December 2023.
In November 2022 working group Wellbeing started a communication campaign on the topic of wellbeing in schools focusing on educators and parents. In August 2023 we started piloting our proposed methodology for wellbeing support in selected Czech regions and schools and also trained the first group of regional wellbeing trainers to ensure the sustainability of this approach in the participating regions.
In the fourth year of Partnership 2030+ (January – December 2024) the working group Local School Administration started preparing and rolling out advocacy activities focusing on strengthening the leadership and support system for nurseries and primary and secondary schools amongst key players in Czech education. With the Czech Ministry of Education we started discussing a joint pilot of the local school administration programme.
In February 2024 the Wellbeing working group prepared Week for wellbeing at school in which more than 80 organisations from all over the Czech Republic participated. The Wellbeing week ended with a conference in Prague. The working group also started advocacy work on the topic of wellbeing in schools. A new topic on which we collaborated with the National Pedagogical Institute is the support of digital wellbeing. We have also prepared an online tool for schools to evaluate the wellbeing support that the school provides to its pupils and staff.
In January 2025 the fifth year of Partnership 2030+ began. In February, we organized another Week for wellbeing at school 2025 in which over 120 organizations from across the Czech Republic and more than 400 Czech schools participated. The Wellbeing week also included a conference in Brno. In the following months, the Wellbeing working group prepared a concept for an effective school counseling and support center which underwent a large public consultation in the autumn. The Local school administration working group, together with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of the Interior, continues to prepare the methodology for pilot testing of local school administration program. In this area we also started cooperation with one of the Czech mayors´ associations. On the Partnership 2030+ platform, we opened a debate on a single measurable goal of Partnership 2030+, which is necessary for collective impact.
As of January 2026 there are thirty three organisations in Partnership 2030+: seven platforms that founded the independent institute, twenty one expert partner organisations and five organisations of consulting partners.