IT Summer School for Girls 2026: A whole new world of IT has opened up for secondary school girls

From 24 to 28 August, our faculty hosted the now traditional IT Summer School for Girls, the longest-running event of its kind in the Czech Republic. It was founded in 2005 by Professor Jan M. Honzík, who hoped this initiative would draw attention to the under-representation of women in IT and, above all, help to address this issue. This year’s edition was attended by 29 secondary school girls.

Every year, participants are introduced to the diversity of the IT world and leave convinced that technology and information technology are open to anyone who is interested. This year, the girls focused on the basics of programming and machine learning in Python; they were given the chance to work with a 3D printer and design the basics of a mobile app. The programme also covered Legobot programming and the ever-present topic of artificial intelligence. There was also an excursion to the major technology firms Thermo Fisher Scientific and Honeywell Scientific. The programme concluded with a panel discussion featuring female graduates from our faculty, who spoke about their career paths in the world of information technology.

More confident and better-prepared participants

Since the event’s inception, Dr Šárka Květoňová has been the coordinator of the Summer School. When asked about the difference between the ‘audience’ today and in the event’s early days, she replies promptly: ‘The girls are more assertive, more self-confident and more self-reliant. And they’re much more IT-oriented – many of them are already studying maths and computer science at secondary school as extra subjects, so to speak, and are even interested in astrophysics, for example. They already have a basic understanding and are more interested in confirming that they’re on the right track.” Over more than twenty years, the summer school has undergone a number of changes, particularly to its programme. In the early days, the emphasis was mainly on object-oriented programming, audio and video processing, and a range of things that even non-experts can now manage with the help of AI. What remains, for example, is the main added value of the event for the participants. “They get to know the various areas that IT encompasses and understand just how broad the field is. The girls also really appreciate the visits to technology companies and the panel discussion. Thanks to these, they discover how things work in practice, what career paths may be available to them, and that some of these can lead them to top positions in IT,” says Květoňová, summarising the event’s main benefits. She also notes that barriers for women in IT used to be much greater. Moreover, the field is very broad and encompasses a number of areas in which organisational skills, team leadership, analytical work and project management are valued – skills in which women often excel.

Lucie, a student, echoes many of the words of the Summer School’s main organiser. “Why did I sign up? For me, it’s down to my family, who are very IT-oriented. I’m now going into my third year of secondary school and I’m thinking about which subjects to take for my A-levels and which university to choose. I also enjoy biology, so I wanted to get a clearer idea of how much I could combine both subjects in my future studies, and how information technology might help me.” Lucie particularly enjoyed the creative parts of the programme: “I like creating new things. For example, I enjoyed programming a robot that I can give various instructions to – in fact, I can do anything with it. Or working with the Micro:bit, where we spent a long time setting up the necessary code. That was great.”

We’d like to thank all the participants in this year’s IT Summer School for Girls and we hope the event has helped them clarify their path towards a new chapter in their lives and careers.

You can find the photo gallery from this year’s event HERE.