National Audit Office (SAO): projects worth half a billion crowns did not lead to an increase in the quality of education

PRAGUE - The Czech Education Ministry has allocated more than half a billion crowns between 2016 and 2023 to projects aimed at improving the quality of education in the regional school system and the results of primary and secondary school pupils. However, this money was spent inefficiently and the quality of education did not improve. In contrast, the Ministry has done a good job of integrating Ukrainian pupils into Czech schools and ensuring that Ukrainian pupils in the Czech Republic can exercise their right to education. This was stated today by the Supreme Audit Office (SAO) on the results of an audit of funds earmarked for regional education support projects. The ministry rejected the SAO's criticism of the quality of education.

The audit was designed to determine whether the Ministry spent the money allocated for projects to support the evaluation and management of the regional education system in 2019 to 2024 efficiently, economically and in accordance with legal regulations. The money for the projects came from the state budget and European funds. The SAO said that the ministry spent CZK 507 million on the Education Information System and spent another CZK 1.3 million on the Education Information System in an inefficient and wasteful manner.

„The quality of education has not improved and pupils are stagnating or even getting worse in key competences such as maths, reading and science. This is shown by international surveys and reports by the Czech School Inspectorate,“ the SAO report says. According to the SAO, the education management projects were formally fulfilled but hardly led to practical application. It cites the Guide to Strategic and Action Planning as an example. The most viewed video, which was part of the project, had 537 views, while there are about 11,000 schools in the Czech Republic. „The low viewership illustrates the SAO's finding that the project did not contribute to improving the quality of education in schools and that the funds were spent inappropriately,“ the press release reads.

Ondřej Macura, spokesperson for the Czech Ministry of Education, told the Czech Press Agency that measuring the success of projects by the number of views of videos on social media is irrelevant and completely ignores the results of Czech pupils in international PISA tests and the high level of engagement of teachers. In the public contract for the Education Information System, worth CZK 27.4 million, the SAO said the ministry violated the Public Procurement Act. It concluded an amendment to the contract which violated the prohibition of substantial changes to the public contract and paid CZK 1.3 million to the contractor on the basis of the amendment. The money was intended for a detailed design for the implementation of the system's extension function, but the ministry did not use it anyway.

In the case of public procurement, the spokesperson also denied any violation of the law. He said the expenditure on information systems was necessary and supported by evidence. „Moreover, the ministry stresses that thanks to the sanctions applied to the contractor, it saved the state CZK 7.7 million, thus fulfilling its role as a good manager,“ he added. The office also examined the 227 million crowns provided between 2017 and 2022 for school quality assessment. Here, it said, the state spent the money efficiently because the project produced concrete results and these results contributed to systemic changes in school evaluation. The ministry used some of the project's findings, for example, in drafting laws or reforming teacher training.

The SAO also concluded that the ministry had spent money on the integration of Ukrainian refugee children before the war in a purposeful and compliant manner. The Ministry provided a total of more than CZK 460 million from the state budget in 2022 and 2023 to support this inclusion. „The SAO found no errors in the process of providing the subsidies. The Ministry of Education and Science spent the funds efficiently and in accordance with legal regulations,“ the SAO said. „On the contrary, we welcome the results of the audit concerning the inclusion of Ukrainian pupils in Czech schools and it is proof that the Czech education system, and therefore mainly Czech teachers and all other school employees, succeeded in this extremely difficult challenge,“ said the spokesperson for the Ministry of Education.

CTK/gnews.cz-jav