Fifty-seven thousand Ukrainian children and students have signed up to attend Czech schools in the new school year, according to Czech Education Minister Vladimír Balaš.

At the start of June, it was estimated that 130,000 Ukrainian students and children were on Czech territory.

However, it is still unclear how many children will start attending school.

The capacity of schools should be sufficient in most places in the Czech Republic, thanks to the law amendment called Lex Ukraine II, allowing principals to create separate classes.

For the 2021-2022 school year, about 965,000 primary school pupils have enrolled, statistics from the education ministry show.

In the last school year, only a fraction of Ukrainian children attended classes – 19% of children were enrolled at the kindergarten level, while 38% were at the primary school level.

Low parental awareness was a barrier to the participation of Ukrainian children in lessons, as were rejections by schools and kindergartens.

The situation was also complicated by the ongoing Ukrainian online classes. Some Ukrainian principals insisted on “distance” attendance for their students, including those in exile. This overlap, therefore, led to pupils focusing exclusively on online learning from Ukraine.

The positive news is that according to the PAQ Research study, most parents whose children have not yet attended school want to bring them in this autumn. The number of children going to school will significantly expand.

Closer cooperation in teaching organisation is one of the points of the recent meeting between the Czech Minister of Education and his Ukrainian counterpart Serhiy Shkarlet.

The number of Ukrainian refugees who have found protection in the Czech Republic is around 400,000.