INFLUENCE OF THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS

In recent years there have been some significant changes in the Czech school system. These changes were affected mainly by developmental trends in Western Europe and they can be characterized by the need for decentralization, democratization and humanization. One of the greatest and the most important changes may be the creation of curricular documents which are obligatory for formal education from ISCED 0 to ISCED 4 levels according to the International Standard Classification of Education. These fundamental documents are the Framework Education Program and the School Program. Together with their implementation, a new concept of key competencies emerged in the Czech educational system. The key competencies can be defined as "a set of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, which are important for personal development of individuals, their active participation in society and their success in life." However, despite the complex concept of key competencies, the highest attention is still paid to the knowledge.

The rapid society development and transformation are accompanied by plenty of new topics that are necessary to incorporate into the content of education but without a corresponding increase in the quantity of allocated time. As a result, the educators are under an increasing pressure and they must somehow deal with this situation, e.g. by the integration of ICT into the education or by the selection of the schoolwork and also by shortening of the fixation and application phases of the lesson in favour of the exposure phase, ... etc.

Lack of time in relation to the amount of schoolwork is also affected by the long summer holidays, which, in the Czech Republic, lasts for two months (July, August). At this time, most students spend their time by doing leisure activities that are not primarily focused on fixation and application of knowledge they acquired during their schooling. As a result, after returning from the holidays, the most of the students possess less knowledge then before. Thus, in order to develop the students’ knowledge further, it is needed to recover it in the first weeks or months of the school year.

This paper deals with the negative influence of two months summer holidays on the knowledge of primary school pupils in the Czech Republic. The level of knowledge is determined by the use of didactic tests in the Czech language (native language) and mathematics. The first set of tests was completed by pupils before the summer holidays and the second one after returning to school. The first and the second set of tests are the same due to the limitations of errors and conclusive evaluation. The paper aims not only to map the loss of knowledge in core subjects, but also to compare the results with the social background of pupils’ families.