One of the careers popular with ECP graduates is diplomacy. We have many former students who have gone on to work for either the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the European Commission or other public service organisations. One of the first was Jan Brunner. He graduated from the ECP in 1999 and following postings in Berlin and London, he is currently the Deputy Czech Ambassador to Austria.
The Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible for the recruitment and training of MFA diplomats. It runs training courses to prepare its students for diplomatic work. So when it was considering a school to trial its approaches to secondary school students, the English College was an obvious choice. The Diplomatic Academy usually targets its recruitment programme at university students so we were delighted when its Director, Dana Kovaříková, came into Elektra recently. Our prospective diplomats, most of whom have been involved in our Model United Nations conferences, the Student Council and the School Council, listened attentively as she spoke about the many opportunities open to young people in the MFA.
She was joined by Jan Brunner, who came back to Prague from Vienna to take part in the session. This meant that our students were not only able to hear about the route to becoming a diplomat, but Jan was also able to share with them his personal experience of what it is really like to serve as a representative of your country abroad.
Jan Brunner, when Deputy Ambassador to the UK, at the Czechoslovak memorial at the Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey