Partnership for Education 2030+

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).

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 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+ (September 2021 – August 2022), 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 addressed practical challenges related to launching the implementation of our proposals in the themes addressed: In the middle tier 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.

The third year of the Partnership 2030+ has started in September 2022. An independent institute Partnership for Education 2030+ was founded by its parent organization SKAV in November. All seven Partnership 2030+ project founders are now members of the independent Partnership 2030+ institute council. As of April 2023 there are twenty two organizations in Partnership 2030+: seven platforms that founded the independent institute, eleven Expert partner organizations and four Consulting partners (you can see a list of the organizations here).

The first three District Partnerships for Education 2030+ were established in September 2022 in Brno – venkov, Šumperk and Jeseník districts. They are currently in the pilot phase. Further district partnerships are to be established in 2023. Working group Middle tier has also finalized version 2.0 of their proposal “How to strengthen the management and support system of nurseries and elementary schools”. This proposal will go through a wide consultation and feedback process that starts in April 2023 and will end in autumn 2023.
In November 2022 working group Wellbeing started a communication campaign on the topic of wellbeing in schools focusing on educators and parents. For the purpose of this campaign a new website wellbeingveskole.cz (Wellbeing in school) and facebook site were created. In autumn 2023 they will start piloting their proposed methodology for wellbeing support in selected Czech regions and schools and will also start training the first group of regional wellbeing trainers to ensure the sustainability of this approach in the participating regions.