Helping Schools Succeed

Through our work, we give public primary schools the help they need to create environments which encourage pupils to perform well and approach learning with enthusiasm and commitment. Success is when a school becomes a platform for children to discover their identities and future potential. Success is children learning how to communicate and engage with the world, understanding how the world works, and also learning how to care for it. Success is learning to live in a way which gives them satisfaction. Step by step, we are helping transform the educational process in public primary schools across the country.

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02/19/2020

The Helping Schools Succeed project plans expansion into one hundred public primary schools

The family foundation of Mrs Renáta Kellnerová and Mr Petr Kellner has been pursuing improvement in the quality of education in public primary schools for a long time. It does so through Helping Schools Succeed, a project that to date has involved 23 primary schools from across the Czech Republic. Following ten years of the project’s successful operation in public schools, the Foundation has decided to increase the number of schools involved to about 100, which means approximately 4,000 teachers and 43,000 students. The Kellner Family Foundation has already donated a total of CZK 250 million for improving the quality of education in public primary schools and expects to provide support to the tune of approximately CZK 40 million annually.

Helping Schools Succeed

02/19/2020

An interview with Ilona Urbanová, Director of Helping Schools Succeed

Mrs Ilona Urbanová has been the Director of Helping Schools Succeed since September 2019. She joined at a time when everyone involved in the project was looking back at the ten years of its existence and thinking about its future development and the best way to use the huge amount of experience amassed. Under her leadership, a new strategy for the project’s future direction, referred to as Helping Schools Succeed Plus, has been created in recent months. She is no newcomer to the field of education – she used to manage a private language school and also took part in founding a high school. She will certainly put her wealth of managerial experience to good use at Helping Schools Succeed. We asked her about her first impressions and the direction she will steer the project in along with her team of teaching experts in the years to come.

Helping Schools Succeed

11/21/2019

Long-term evaluation of Helping Schools Succeed project in publicly funded primary schools: eight out of ten teachers are proud of their profession

The Helping Schools Succeed project is now in its tenth year of publicly funded primary schools. The long-term plan for improving educational standards and teachers’ professional development was initiated by the family foundation of Mrs Renáta Kellnerová and Mr Petr Kellner, which has contributed approximately CZK 37 million a year to the project over the last few years. According to a survey carried out in collaboration with experts from the Institute for Research and Development of Education at Charles University’s Faculty of Education, 91% of teachers from schools involved in the project are satisfied with their profession and 81% are proud of their profession. The survey confirmed that professional training for teachers is more effective when implemented directly in schools; the result is greater motivation and self-confidence among teachers.

Helping Schools Succeed

09/07/2018

Helping Schools Succeed is improving instruction for more than 8,700 pupils of government primary schools by educating their teachers

The Helping Schools Succeed project has stepped into the tenth academic year, which is the first year under the leadership of its new director, Mrs Eva Lokšová. The 2018/19 school year will be marked by additional qualitative changes at the 22 public primary schools involved in the project. More than 800 teachers and more than 8,700 pupils will receive pedagogical and financial support this year. The project’s key issues include the development of reading and of reading and critical literacy, and formative assessment. The family foundation of Mrs Renáta Kellnerová and Mr Petr Kellner initiated the Helping Schools Succeed project and has been financing it since 2009.

Helping Schools Succeed

08/09/2018

The Third Summer School of Reading for teachers opens in Brno on 12 August

The third edition of the Summer School, organised by the readership promotion team of the Helping Schools Succeed project, will open on Sunday 12 August 2018. The workshops of this year’s Summer School of Reading will take place at the Orea Resort Santon on the Brno Dam until Friday 17 August 2018. Some 120 teachers from more than 45 primary schools from the whole of the Czech Republic will participate in 20 programme streams over those six days. The workshops will be led by 26 lecturers, most of whom are teachers and head teachers from the field, plus two university teachers and four teaching specialists who are not active teachers.

Helping Schools Succeed

04/16/2018

What’s important are skills, not knowledge

What’s most important isn’t knowing everything, but being able to discuss things, says JANA KOPECKÁ, the first-ever winner of the Global Teacher Prize Czech Republic. She’s been teaching the junior years at Kunratice Primary School in Prague for thirty years now, and one of the things she talks about is how the education system has changed during this time.

About our Public Primary School Programme

Every pupil can become a good reader and writer. In this process, they need a teacher who believes in them and is able to find the paths forward for children in all their diversity. Pupils also need a community of readers and writers in their classmates and teachers.

We support a network of more than a hundred schools as they nurture children into independent and thoughtful readers and writers who will later apply their communication skills in personal, professional and civic life.

Our foundation directs the second largest proportion of its donations to a reading and writing programme for public primary schools.

About us

What people say about the project

Helping Schools Succeed is a carefully designed programme of comprehensive intervention which has great potential to produce ongoing improvements in Czech education. By responding to the real needs of schools individually, the programme lives up to the partnership principle it is based on. Hana Košťálová not only brings an extensive theoretical knowledge of factors which benefit teaching and learning to the programme, she has a deep understanding of how schools function stemming from her many years of work with teachers. The programme represents a key source of inspiration for any intervention programme initiated by NGOs or the public sector.

Jana Straková

Institute for Research and Development of Education, Faculty of Education, Charles University

We especially appreciate that the project is not based on one-way training. It is inspiring to explore and push the boundaries of teaching together, whether this involves teacher support or working with the teachers of associated schools.

Miroslav Kubíček

Helping Schools Succeed is an example of a very well-prepared and targeted programme which is effective in supporting education. Based on many years of experience of the programme’s achievements and results, I’m in a good position to say that far from being selective assistance for just a few schools, the programme has prompted deeper changes in the spirit of a mutually learning community, generated expertise and snowballed around the institutions receiving support.

Miroslav Hřebecký

Programming Director, EDUin

Teachers learnt to think more about their teaching during the project and changed it from the ground up – for the better, we would say. Now they always start with the student and their needs. They also think about how to make every lesson truly work for everybody.

Vít Beran

Our involvement in this programme has completely changed the way we look at the work of a teacher and everything that this entails. It has shown us what true teamwork among colleagues – whether teachers or school leaders – looks like.

Ivo Mikulášek

Headteacher, Dobronín Primary and Nursery School

We’re also seeing how they are learning to express their opinions, respect the views of others and think critically about the information we give them. Teachers are increasingly becoming more like educational guides for the children.