The Helping Schools Succeed project grows

The newly admitted schools will take part in sharing experience with other schools involved in the project for five or more years during the holidays. In September they will start working with instructional coaches and with teaching assistants in classes. They will prepare pedagogic development plans for the schools and the individual teachers during the academic year. They will include tried and tested teaching methods such as formative evaluation, reading workshops, teaching maths using Professor Hejný’s method etc. in their work as they need. They will also use the extensive know-how that Helping Schools Succeed has collected for public schools in the Czech Republic to date and that it keeps developing: methods, themed video tutorials, inspiration from Critical Literacy, a periodical issued by the project team, and a unique manual of the children’s path to reading.

The call for tenders took six months and the members of the project’s expert board were choosing from dozens of applications submitted by schools. One of the vital conditions that each school had to fulfil is the agreement of the majority of the teaching staff with the school’s involvement in the project. The project aims to intensively support one school in each region of the Czech Republic. With the newly admitted schools, two-thirds of regions have been covered.

Schools newly admitted to Helping Schools Succeed
Husova 17 Primary School and Preschool in Brno
The team consists of 50 teachers and teaching assistants and the school has 500 students.
Director Roman Tlustoš comments on the admission in the project: “What I like is that Helping Schools Succeed is a comprehensive project and that it pursues success for every student through investing in the quality of teaching work. I am convinced that this is the right way.”

Slatiňany Primary School, T. G. Masaryka 136
The team has 38 teachers and the school has 480 students.
Director Ivo Mandys comments on the admission in the project: “The goal of the project appeals to us and it is in line with our school’s vision, which is focus on each individual student. We are looking forward to the mentoring support, which we already have experience with, and to tandem teaching, which we are just trying out. We appreciate the opportunity for working with successful schools and teaching leaders from all over the Czech Republic.”

8th Primary School in Most, Vítězslava Nezvala 2614
The team consists of 50 teachers and teaching assistants and the school has 530 students.
Director Roman Ziegler comments on the admission in the project: “We enrolled in the project aiming to improve our work and obtain support crucial for such improvement, whether it is in material, financial or methodological form. We take the fact that our school was selected as a challenge to improve further still.”

Helping Schools Succeed
The project contributes towards improving the quality of teaching in public primary schools. Its goal is to ensure that as many children as possible can study at good schools, with full involvement and with joy. It works with entire teaching teams on a long-term basis. The experience gained to date indicates that long-term and systematic support contributes most to transforming school culture into one that focuses on the success of each student. The Kellner Family Foundation initiated the Helping Schools Succeed project and it was the first in the Czech Republic to start long-term comprehensive support of public primary schools with private funding.