Faculties of Education from the Perspective of the Government Accreditation Commission

This overview study provides an account of the context in which nine faculties of education have been functioning in the Czech Republic since 1990. It characterises the changes in Czech higher education (the increase in the number of faculties at tradi-tional universities, the emergence of „regional universities“, the assignment of faculties of education to other faculties). It describes the founding, form and activity of the Accreditation Committee of the Government of the CR. During the last 21 years of their existence the education faculties have experienced three waves of thorough evaluation of their activities. The study briefly mentions the first wave of assessment (1994-1995), which identified serious deficiencies in the activities of faculties of education. The second wave of evaluation took place 1998-2000 and reported some improvement. The study mentions the Bologna Process and its application to teacher training in the Czech Republic: only teacher training for the 1st level of basic schools remains unstructured. Teacher training for the 2nd level of basic schools and for secondary schools has been structured into a bachelor degree and a master‘s degree following on from it. The third wave of assess¬ment of faculties of education started in 2008 and is still underway. As yet five of the nine faculties of education have undergone evaluation. This study argues that ihe position of faculties of education is becoming stronger in the framework of universities because they are taking responsibility for the educational-psychological element in teacher training and starting to develop the subject didactics part of teacher training, including research activities in subject didactics. Problems remain however in the qualification growth of teachers, in the research and publication activity of faculties, and in inter-faculty co-operation within universities.