Can a child go to school in two countries? Czech court ‘experiments’ with custody limits

A landmark decision by the Czech justice system has sparked debate over the limits of alternating custody as a young girl begins her education in two different countries simultaneously.

The girl, whose parents live on opposite sides of the Czech-Slovak border, is currently attending first grade at elementary schools in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The arrangement, reports Novinky.cz, follows a protracted legal battle between the father, who resides in the Czech Republic, and the mother, who moved back to her native Slovakia following the couple’s separation.

When the child reached school age in September 2025, the parents remained deadlocked over where she should be enrolled.

Initially, the Vsetín District Court intervened with a preliminary injunction, favoring the father’s request. The court argued that the girl had spent the majority of her life in the Czech Republic and that "graduating first grade in two schools fulfilled the characteristics of an undesirable experiment."

To avoid this, the court temporarily reduced the mother’s custody to just two weekends a month.

However, the Ostrava Regional Court of Appeal later overturned this, reinstating equal alternating care. The appellate judges argued that maintaining a strong bond with both parents outweighed the logistical challenges of dual schooling.

They noted that the girl had adapted well to alternating between two kindergartens in the past and had expressed a personal willingness to "manage" attending two different schools.

The father recently elevated the case to the Constitutional Court, arguing that the "two-school regime" was not in the best interests of the child and unfairly penalized him for the mother’s relocation.

The Constitutional Court, led by Judge Michal Bartoň, declined to intervene at this stage. The court ruled that the father could not technically claim a violation of his daughter's rights on her behalf, as her interests are legally represented by an appointed guardian.

"The district court... will be able to thoroughly evaluate, based on the experience already acquired in implementing the two-school regime, the extent to which the parallel school attendance model is suitable," the judges stated.

The judiciary is expected to monitor the girl's progress in both systems before issuing a final, permanent verdict on which school—and which country—will take priority for her future education.

The Czech-Slovak case is genuinely unprecedented as a court-sanctioned arrangement, but the underlying dilemma (where should a child go to school when parents live in different countries?) is one thousands of EU families face.

According to the European Commission, there are around 140,000 international divorces per year in the EU, many involving school-age children.

The Czech-Slovak arrangement works partly because the two countries share a language family, similar school calendars, and nearly identical curricula. Other splits would be significantly more complex.

Under EU rules, the court with jurisdiction over custody and schooling decisions is the court in the country where the child habitually resides. Decisions made in one EU member state are enforceable in others.

Czech law does, however, allow children to fulfill compulsory schooling abroad. Parents can notify a Czech "home school" (kmenová škola) that their child is attending school abroad, and can choose whether to have the child sit exams in selected subjects at the Czech school to obtain a Czech primary education certificate alongside their foreign one

There is currently no dedicated research on children attending two schools in two countries simultaneously, making this case a genuine legal and developmental experiment. The Czech-Slovak ruling shows courts are increasingly willing to prioritize the parent-child bond over administrative correctness.

But as the district court's ongoing monitoring of this girl's progress suggests, the jury is still very much out on whether dual schooling truly serves a child's best interests.