Hroznová Elementary School, Brno, Czech Republic

The school provides lower as well as higher elementary level education and after-school activities for an ideal number of pupils (450). English is taught here from the first form in the context of the pilot project of the City of Brno Municipality titled “English from First Form”. The school organizes annual trips to English- and German-speaking countries. Since 2014 the school has had its Pupils´ Parliament significantly contributing to the organization of various events (such as Halloween, Spring Market, and Colourful Week etc.).

Participatory Budget at Hroznová Elementary School

In October and November 2017 the school took part in the Participatory Budget for Schools project. In the context of the project the school received CZK 30,000 from the Brno-Centre city council. The PB involved pupils from the 5th to 9th forms. Project coordination at the Hroznová elementary school was entrusted to Mgr. Petra Franková.

Detailed information for the pupils was available on the school website where they could download and print the PB with Ebi, a worksheet with a description of the PB progress, individual stages and tasks.

Participatory Budget

On Wednesday 8 November 2017 a presentation workshop was held from 7 am. Pupils proposing a project presented their work to the others. All of them implemented this task excellently. The workshop was held in the presence of Mrs. Dobešová and Mrs. Krulová representing the Brno-Centre city council. In the end all workshop participants voted for the project that they liked most. Ten projects advanced to the approval stage:

1. ‍Bicycle and scooter pound
2. A screen for physics lessons
3. A healthy snack dispenser
4. Rubik’s Cube club
5. Microphones with repro boxes
6. Seating bags for corridors
7. Exterior blinds for the IT classroom
8. Specimens for biology lessons
9. Music - ringing
10. A rabbit for the fifth class

"I was surprised that the children did not think up ideas for themselves but really things for the school."

Petra Franková, Coordinator, Hroznová Elementary School, Brno

The projects were approved by the school headmaster in cooperation with the PB coordinator.

After this stage a campaign followed, during the course of which the authors improved their projects and presented them independently in their classes, displaying them on the classroom notice boards and trying to persuade their classmates to vote for their projects.

A press conference was held on the PB project on Tuesday 14 November at 1 pm. The authors of the ten most successful projects presented them for the last time. The conference was attended by the mayor for Brno-Centre, Mr. Martin Landa, and the journalist Daniel Hrbolka of Brněnský deník daily. Brněnský deník also published an article about the event on Thursday 16 November 2017.

Voting took place on Wednesday 15 November in the IT classroom and. Each voter received a unique code to log in. Each pupil could vote for 3 projects. Each class had ten minutes to vote and the total number of voters was 229.

"Next time, since we plan on doing PB again, I would definitely give the kids more time to brainstorm ideas. The PB should be held at least once a year for every pupil to be able to try, I could see how everybody liked it and they also enjoyed the electronic voting in the application, in that they had to enter a PIN."

Petra Franková, Coordinator, Hroznová Elementary School, Brno

Voting Results

The five most successful projects:

1. ‍A healthy snack dispenser, author Matyáš Bukolský
2. Music instead of bell ringing for the start/end of lessons, authors Pavel Beck, Kristýna Černošková
3. Exterior blinds for the IT classroom, author František Sponar
4. A screen for the physics classroom, authors Adam Beharka, Patrik Bárta
5. Microphones with repro boxes, authors Jan Zahradníček, Kryštof Chmela

The authors of the winning projects were rewarded with a diploma and a small present.