They sit at computers and don’t talk. Children have more and more problems with speech at registration – News

Thousands of children are currently going through the first major test in their lives. Enrollment for the first classes started at the beginning of April. What do they have the most trouble with? “With speech, with pronunciation,” says Renata Handšuchová, a teacher from the 22nd elementary school in the Doubravka district of Pilsen.

“For some, it is a very big problem, sometimes unfortunately the parents don’t hear it. Or they don’t want to hear,” he points out.

Hana Matoušková, deputy director at the same base, sees it similarly. According to her, today’s children are lagging behind compared to their predecessors in this area. “The level of speech is significantly deteriorating, the children have a problem with the pronunciation of individual sounds,” Matoušková points out and adds: “I think they lack communication. They talk less with their parents, sing less, say poems less. And they sit more at tablets or computers.”

At the mentioned school, registrations are divided into two days – they start on Monday and end on Tuesday. Future schoolchildren arrive with their parents gradually, according to previous registration.

“Electronic applications are one thing, but it’s good when we actually see the child, we can help uncover potential problems, send them to a counseling center or offer them a preparatory class,” says Matoušková.

“We are expecting around one hundred and twenty children, roughly the same as in previous years,” he points out. They have three classes of freshmen here this year, so next school year it will probably be the same. “But we also have capacity for four classes,” states the representative. However, it will not be clear how many pupils will actually enroll until sometime in the second half of June.

“We’ll see how many delays we have, so far it looks like about fifteen. Last year there were thirty of them and that is surprisingly a lot. Apparently a consequence of covid – parents were afraid that they wouldn’t have to tutor their children,” adds Matoušková.

In the whole of Pilsen, they expect that this year, like last year, schools will accept sixteen hundred first-year students, plus a hundred children from Ukrainian preschool classes.