Partnership for Education 2030+ (Partnership 2030+ for short) was established on 19 June 2020 when the top representatives of seven platforms in education signed the text of the Memorandum on the Partnership 2030+:

• Michal Černý, president, Association of Primary School Principals of the Czech Republic
• Jiří Holý, chairman, Association of Regional Educational Institutions
• Milan Kotík, member of the Executive Committee, Standing Conference of Educational Associations (SKAV)
• Jiří Krist, chairman, National Network of Local Action Groups
• Aleš Sedláček, chairman, Czech Council of Children and Youth
• Zdeněk Slejška, director, Eduzměna Foundation
• Klára Šimáčková Laurenčíková, chairwoman, Czech Society for Inclusive Education

Subsequently, the Ministry of Education and the Czech School Inspectorate joined the cooperation with the Partnership 2030+ 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 organizations 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.

This is what the Czech Education Policy Strategy 2030+ (approved by the Czech government in autumn 2020) aims to achieve as well. The Partnership 2030+ explicitly focuses on supporting the achievement of the two main goals of this national strategy. 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 education systems in the world (OECD, 2018:48), with a huge number of independent players (10,000 schools, 2,500 education authorities, 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 organizations 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 knowhow on how to approach it without limiting the freedom and autonomy of the individual actors.

Partnership 2030+ has decided to focus on two specific long-term goals, namely to jointly design, pilot and put into practice the following in the country:

1. an effective system of leadership and support for local schools, capable of improving children’s educational outcomes and increasing equal opportunities in education (so called middle tier),
2. a system of measures leading to the healthy physical and psychosocial development of children and young people and the realization of their potential in personal, professional and civic life (wellbeing – with an emphasis on coordinating support for the most vulnerable children).

The Partnership 2030+ currently has a structure consisting of:

• The Partnership Council, which meets once a month and is composed of senior representatives of the seven founding platforms.
• Two continuous working groups: the Middle Tier and Wellbeing, whose members are experts from the founding platforms, experts from the Expert partner organizations (nine Expert partner organizations joined the Partnership 2030+ by signing the Memorandum in April 2021) and representatives of the Consulting partners.
• The Partnership 2030+ Coordination Team within the SKAV umbrella organization.
• Impact Evaluation Team, which will be established in the second year of the Partnership 2030+ based on the approval of the collective impact indicators.

In the first year of the Partnership 2030+, we managed to set up supporting processes for the functioning of the cooperation according to the principles of collective impact, with both working groups generating visions and proposals for the specific objectives of the Partnership 2030+. Not only were we able to involve individual representatives of the affiliated organizations in the consultation, but we were also able to start consultation processes on the relevant thematic areas within their organizational structures.

In the second year of the Partnership 2030+, we have finalized the indicators of collective impact and are developing a coordinated action plan based on voluntary commitments of the partner organizations. We also face practical challenges related to launching the implementation of our proposals in the themes addressed: In the middle tier we are preparing to pilot District Partnerships for Education 2030+ in the regions, and in the area of wellbeing we are preparing a campaign to communicate the importance of this topic to different target groups in education.