In a letter to the Minister of Education Przemyslaw Czarnek the Ombudsman Marcin Wiącek reported on the problems faced by young people from Ukraine who want to learn in Polish schools. He pointed out that schools lacked adequate systems to integrate refugee children into Polish education system.

Czarnek announced that he would inspect schools and check how they deal with young people from Ukraine. It appears, however, that the headmasters are not at all keen on this. And it’s not because they have something to hide.

In his letter to Minister Czarnek, Ombudsman not only drew attention to the lack of an adequate system in Polish institutions to help young people from Ukraine. He also referred to studies which showed that refugees were struggling with problems such as overly large classes, a linguistic barrier and war trauma. However, none of these problems were as of yet properly addressed by Polish authorities.

At the time he received the letter from the Ombudsman Minister Czarnek replied that the Ministry of Education had no right to monitor young people from Ukraine studying remotely. He did, however, announce inspections of schools to check how they manage and take care of non-Polish students.

"The Ministry of Education has no legal grounds to monitor whether young refugees from Ukraine, who are not attending Polish schools, study remotely in Ukrainian schools. Similarly, the Ministry has no legal grounds to collect information about the quality and regularity of learning in the Ukrainian remote school system, which would de facto mean interfering in the education system of another country," said Czarnek, quoted by Portal Samorządowy.

Krakow's "Gazeta Wyborcza" decided to check what the head teachers of Krakow's schools think about Czarnek's idea. They noted that the Ministry of Education should not control the schools where young people from Ukraine study, as it has not set any guidelines beforehand.

"One can control when one has given guidelines on how to act. Then one can check whether the school has implemented them. We didn't receive any specific guidelines from Minister Czarnek regarding Ukrainian pupils. We are dealing with the problems ourselves. And there are a lot of them," says Jolanta Gajęcka, headmistress of Primary School No. 2 in Krakow.

The "Gazeta Wyborcza" text also features the voices of headmasters and headmistresses from other Kraków schools. Each of them has a different experience, results and approach. Why? Because, as Gajęcka points out, schools in Poland are not prepared to teach young people from Ukraine and usually do not have any concept of teaching them at all. The idea of any inspection in this context seems absurd.

Sure, there are indications that the ministry tried to act in favour of the Ukrainian refugee children in the past. After all, it organised an eighth-grade exam in which Ukrainian students took part and were distributed worksheets with instructions written in Ukrainian. Unfortunately the answers had to be written… in Polish. And according to the experience of head teachers, not everyone wants to learn the language.

In an interview with "Gazeta Wyborcza" Mrs Gajęcka stresses that Ukrainian children can suddenly leave the school and adds that most of the time they do not want to learn Polish. This does not surprise her, as they often have trouble bonding with Polish pupils anyway and usually prefer to keep to their own company.

In May, we reported about a report by Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej (The Center for Citizienshp Education), which showed that Ukrainian children were dropping out of Polish schools. It found that only one in five Ukrainian teenagers goes to a Polish school, and that 8 per cent of secondary-school-aged pupils have quit over the past six months.

Why is this happening? The reasons have already been mentioned in the Ombudsman's letter, but they can also be heard in the statements of the head teachers and the Center's research. Young people from Ukraine are simply afraid of studying in Polish schools, they are terrified of exams and the vision of writing them in a language with which so far they have had no contact at all. In addition to this stress, it should not be forgotten that they still have to deal with the trauma caused by the war.

Perhaps then, instead of carrying out inspections in schools, Minister Czarnek should come up with a decent plan that would relieve the burden not only from schools but also from Ukrainian pupils? Of course, this will look different in each school, which is why it would be all the more useful to have schemes so that each school can provide suitable and safe learning conditions. Then young Ukrainians would certainly not give up on education so quickly.

Source: Gazeta Wyborcza, Portal Samorządowy