Abstract
Primary School Pupil Numbers and Demographic Change in Czech Municipalities Abstract Following a sharp fall in fertility to its historical minimum after 1990, the population of Czechia began to increase again gradually. Consequently birth cohorts of varying size are emerging and these then enter the education system.
Moreover suburbanisation has led to a change in population distribution. These factors have mean that in some areas primary school capacity does not reflect the numbers of primary school age children, with some schools having insufficient places and others suffering from a lack of pupils.
The aim of this dissertation is to analyse regional demographic change in Czechia after 1990, including changes in the spatial pattern of compulsory school age children (6-14 years). The information obtained is set against the changes in the spatial patterns of primary school pupils and maximum primary school capacity.
The whole analysis is undertaken within the catchment regions for combined primary schools (schools that provide nine years of primary and middle school education), which were created on the basis of the shortest road distance from the district to the nearest combined primary school. Webb's graphs were used along with spatial autocorrelation since these are appropriate methods for conducting analyses at the regional level.
After 1990 the spatial pattern of demographic change was transformed, with border areas that had originally recorded population growth beginning to see a decline in numbers, particularly as a result of migration, and the hinterlands of Prague and other cities that had previously seen population falls recording population increases, initially because of migration and then as a consequence of natural population growth. Full text of the abstract is available in the Thesis Repository of CU