Rescue, stabilization and development of small rural elementary schools in the Czechia and Europe.

Rural schools providing primary and lower secondary education have lost pupils in the last few decades. It has been mostly due to rural depopulation and natality. This applies to schools in the Czech Republic as well as in other European countries. The worst situation is in the rural peripheries, where many schools extincted. The issue of stabilization of rural education was mainly followed up by authors from northwestern Europe and the USA. The aim of the thesis is to create a set of measures to rescue, stabilize and develop small rural elementary schools in the Czech Republic. This is based on the evaluation of professional literature and on interviewing the representatives of selected elementary schools and the relevant municipalities in the case study area of the Prachatice and Český Krumlov districts. The examined primary schools are divided into eight types - complete in cities, complete in semi-peripheral small towns, complete in semi-peripheral villages, complete in peripheral small towns, complete in peripheral villages, incomplete in suburbia, incomplete in semi-peripheral villages and incomplete in peripheral villages. The evaluated literature is organized into five thematic groups, the responses of school headmasters and mayors into three blocks of indicators - basic indicators, community-functional indicators of primary schools and indicators of support of primary schools by municipalities and communities. The main resolution of the thesis is the above-mentioned set of measures