Prague 6 Opens Two School Buildings on the First Day of Term, at a Combined CZK 276m

Children in Prague 6 sat down on 1 September in a new school pavilion on Na Kocínce, and on the same morning the district also opened a rebuilt Mateřská škola Libocká. Between them the two buildings cost roughly CZK 276 million and add 350 places to the district's school network. The pavilion was opened by representatives of the district and of the city, which paid for most of it.

What was built on Na Kocínce

The building holds eight classrooms of thirty pupils, a planned capacity of 240. Two further rooms are designated for the after-school club and, mayor Jakub Stárek (ODS) said, could serve as teaching rooms if needed, taking the building to ten classes. A canteen doubles as a multi-purpose hall; the garden has an outdoor classroom, a natural amphitheatre, a large gazebo and play equipment.

There is a big canteen here which will also serve as a hall for school assemblies and events for the public, so that we connect with community life here in the neighbourhood too.

— Jakub Stárek (ODS), mayor of Prague 6

Construction ran from November 2024 to this August and cost about CZK 150 million. The city contributed CZK 100 million and part of the remainder came from the State Environmental Fund. The building is designed to passive energy standard, has a green roof and will use rainwater to irrigate the school garden. It stands on city land, to a design by Jaromír Kosnar and Radovan Kupka of the AND architectural studio.

The school is not a new institution. Na Kocínce is a detached site of ZŠ Bílá and will remain under it. Three first-year classes and three fifth-year classes started there on Monday, with further pupils to be added gradually.

The plot was already a classroom

The detail worth holding onto is what stood on the site before. Stárek said the plot had already belonged to the school and previously held two garden gazebos used by the after-school club. As the number of children grew, teaching moved into them, in conditions he described as unsuitable.

The pavilion, in other words, does not solve a shortage that appeared this year. It regularises an improvisation that had been running for some time — the same sequence Prague 14 has been working through at Jahodnice, where a converted community centre and then a temporary modular school preceded the permanent building now under construction. Districts absorb demographic pressure with whatever they can pay for, and the proper building arrives last.

Liboc: a villa, an extension and a neolithic layer

Mateřská škola Libocká reopened after the construction of a two-storey building alongside the reconstruction of the original historic villa. Capacity is now 110 children. The complex is barrier-free, the garden was reworked, and the nursery has a class for children with special educational needs. The architects drew on modern Scandinavian nurseries, among other references.

The work cost roughly CZK 126 million, of which the district obtained CZK 18 million from the city hall. An archaeological survey preceded the building works and turned up ceramics from the neolithic period.

Deputy mayor for education Mariana Čapková (Praha Sobě) said the two buildings represent a significant expansion of the district's school infrastructure.

Who pays for school places

The split between the two projects is the part that generalises. On Na Kocínce the city covered two-thirds of the cost; in Liboc it covered one seventh. The difference is not obviously about the buildings — a nursery reconstruction and a primary pavilion are comparable in scale, and Liboc came out the more expensive of the two per place.

Availability of school places is a long-standing problem in Prague, ČTK notes, and concentrated in the fast-developing quarters with new housing. Prague 6 is not one of those; its shortage at Na Kocínce came from growth in an established area, which the garden gazebos had been absorbing.