While here in the capital education functionaries are fighting over integration policy and nationalist aid appointments, there have been a few refreshing pieces of education news to come out of the second city lately.
The number of students from socially excluded communities in Brno (mostly Roma) applying to high schools and apprenticeship programs is on the rise, according to deník.cz. The increase has been witnessed by social workers like those at IQ Roma Service, who say education seems to carry higher value now, though the students still tend to be easily discouraged when confronted with much more demanding workloads than at their basic school. The social workers say students from socially excluded communities also find apprenticeships and high school financially demanding and money from the state could help. The cynical, though possibly valid response to this increase in students has been to tie it to changes in the law regarding unemployment benefits, which now requires a certain minimum period of work before benefits can be claimed.
Generous grants totaling 100 million Kč will allow 26 top researchers to work at four research universities in Brno: Masaryk University, the Czech Technical University (CVUT), Mendel Forestry and Agriculture University and the University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences will get 19 foreign and 7 Czech researchers with the money provided in part by the Moravian regional government and the EU. The scientists will lead small research teams and teach at the universities. One of the experts soon to call Brno home is Kamil Paruch, who worked in the United States on the development on anti-cancer medications. Physicist Jan Cizek will relocated to Brno from Singapore, where he was working to discover new nanotechnologies, a project he’ll continue in his new post.
Brno’s University of Veterenary and Pharmaceutical Sciences (VFU) is inaugurating two new institutes and two new laboratories from the beginning of this month. The Institutes of Pathological Morphology and Parasitology Infectious Diseases and Microbiology have just opened, and the Clinic for Ruminant and Porcine Diseases and the Clinical Laboratory for Large Animals are the other new additions. The new institutes and clinics are part of a broader effort by the Czech Republic’s only veterinary school to position itself among the most elite in Europe by attaining a positive assessment from the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education evaluation (EAEVE). About 3,000 students attend the school, 60 of which are foreigners studying in the English program.
Comments are closed.