Quarantine, distance learning, isolation, covid, these are the bogeymen of the past two years, not only in education but in the lives of everyone affected by the pandemic.
Isolation was very hard especially for adolescents and children who could not attend full-time classes and thus could not see their classmates. It is for this group of people that socialisation with peers is extremely important, as friends become a second family at this stage of adolescence. Isolation has led to a rapid increase in the number of people seeing psychologists, psychiatrists or other therapists.
The good news is that the Education Minister, Petr Gazdík, has announced a plan to fund school psychologists for schools with more than 180 students through a European subsidy. Specifically, from the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme with a budget of 90 billion, of which 28 billion is earmarked for regional education. Subsequently, the state should finance special and social educators and school psychologists, which are currently in short supply in the education system.
Smaller schools will be offered a link to the regional psychological and pedagogical counselling centre. This means that a specialist from these institutions should be present in schools at least once a week and available to meet the needs of students.
Hopefully, there will be enough professionals to fill the new positions, which are estimated to number up to around seven hundred.
