INVESTMENTS

Supporting Education Means

Investing in Future.

Progress in technical spheres is amazing as cutting-edge technologies play a crucial role in the present

world. Robotics and automation inside and Industry 4.0 outside become an indivisible part of most

industries. Education, too, is responding to this dynamic development: considerable investments are

spent on modern equipment and high–quality tools because we believe that this sort of investment

pays off in the future.

The word “investment” may be understood as a synonym

”for future”. I could list sixteen projecta worth 300 million CZK aimed at energy–saving measures in schools

which have just begun, but these are operation and

maintenance investments that would have to be made

sooner or later anyway. What I am much happier to

speak about is the investments in modern technologies and equipment which help to efficiently educate

and train students for the future. Investments in modern technologies make students better informed, more

skilled and, as a bonus, more prepared for their professional careers.

In the long-term prospective, the Moravian-Silesian

region has invested much in education. In the past

program period of 2007–2015, the region spent nearly

500 million CZK on the modernization of teaching and

support of schools, two–thirds of which were invested

in support of technical and IT education, i.e. the fields

of growing importance in the near future. These investments are being developed with another investment of

240 million CZK; a considerable part of which is going

to be spent on progressive spheres of mechatronics and

automation, both closely connected to Industry 4.0.

Connecting Theory and Practice

We are renewing schools to open specialized classrooms with collaborative robots, virtual reality labs

with 3D visualization to illustrate subject matter

and make education more attractive, especially in

machine engineering and automotive fields of study.

We are also concentrating on the support of professional training in CNC machining, and the modernization of welding instruction through modern methods

using welding simulators, often using virtual reality

which makes instruction more efficient and saves

running costs (including costs of material and energies).

Other spheres to get significant investments are

the actual facilities where the practical instruction

of students takes place: some school workshops

are so dated in their equipment and design that the

schools need to construct new workshops rather

than inefficient renovations to make them meet the

demands of the 21st century. A positive example is

the construction of new workshops at the Secondary

Professional School in Bruntál (worth 50 million CZK)

or the planned construction at Secondary Professional School in Frýdek-Místek (intended budget

app. 200 million CZK). This year we have started the

renewal of the agricultural school in Opava which is

unfortunately limited by the regional budgeting as the

total costs total up to 200 million CZK due to training

cattle and pig stalls, and the general modernization of

the farm. The key problem when investing large sums

is that the implementation of financial resources from

EU funds is not possible.

We shall continue investing in progressive technologies and school equipment. It is obvious that these

investments will pay off in the savings of operational

costs (in the case of investments spent on buildings

and constructions) and even more in the future thanks

to young generations being well prepared for life and

work in the modern world.

POSITIV 1/2018

|

37