IEA INSIDER 2025
The Czech Republic on ICILS
Based on a revised curricular document (national-level Framework Education Programme), each school was responsible for developing its own School Educational Programme. Basic schools could start teaching according to the new informatics/computer science curriculum as early as September 2021 on a voluntary basis. The obligation to teach according to revised documents for basic schools did not begin until September 2023 at the primary level and a year later at the lower secondary level of basic school. Thus, the ICILS 2023 cycle brought a unique perspective for the Czech Republic as it mapped the situation of students’ computer and information literacy (CIL) and (CT) before the new informatics implementation started in all basic schools. Furthermore, the Czech School Inspectorate carried out a national survey focused on students' digital competencies and CT and a thematic inspection with the same focus in April 2024 and November 2023. The Czech School Inspectorate benefitted from having findings from both the international and national perspective and there was a joint release of the ICILS national report and the back in November 2024. It is important to add that the national survey focused also on a reflection of a very wide and rich set of activities that the National Pedagogical Institute and its unit of digitalization in education is providing to support schools as far as the teachers' professional development is concerned. Findings from both ICILS 2023 and the national survey showed, among other things, that schools do their best to develop positive aspects of digital technology use for learning and teaching as well as doing their best to accommodate potential risks of technology use. Teachers and school principals are well aware of the different aspects, and they try to find a good balance, including well-being in general as well as digital well-being of students and teachers. At the same time, it was found that many varied and parallel activities concerning digitalization are happening at schools but often with a rather low level of coordination. Therefore the Czech School Inspectorate suggested to support schools more on their way toward the so-called digital education ecosystem which is a concept introduced by the Council of the European Union in 2022. The ecosystem is believed to cover all parts of “the equation,” namely the infrastructure, content as well as students with their teachers. The idea of the ecosystem is to develop a greater interconnectedness of elements and a greater synergy of them within each school. The next ICILS 2028 cycle and new rounds of a national survey will show us what developments will be achieved. ■
BY JOSEF BASL
The Czech Republic is a long term and proud IEA member represented by the Czech School Inspectorate. Our first IEA study participation was in the TIMSS 1995 cycle. Although findings have been used to varying extents within the last 30 years, the main purpose has always been the same. Findings from IEA studies have provided important external high quality feedback for our education system. IEA studies have always brought a specific perspective to a more complex mosaic of how the Czech education system has been monitored and assessed. There has been a positive development over the years. Synergies between international assessment and national evaluation and assessment have been developed by the Czech School Inspectorate within the last 12 years. Furthermore, the Czech Republic has now the strongest participation it ever had, being part of the following IEA studies: PIRLS, TIMSS (grades 4 and 8), ICILS, and ICCS. To provide more context, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (Ministry) introduced the Strategy for the Education Policy of the Czech Republic up to 2030+ in 2020. A very crucial part of the Strategy implementation is a set of indicators for education system monitoring and evaluation, including indicators coming from IEA studies' findings. The Czech Republic participated in ICILS in the 2013 and 2023 cycles. It was not only based on ICILS 2013 results and reflections that the Ministry revised the cross-curricular topic of informatics and information and communication technologies in 2021, in connection with the Strategy 2030+. It was about a revision of documents valid from 2005. The cross-curricular topic underwent a significant change to move to the so called new informatics with a focus on digital competencies and computational thinking (CT). It has been started with basic school level (ISCED 1 and 2) that will be followed by pre-primary level (ISCED 0) and upper-secondary level (ISCED 3) curricula revisions later on.
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