Despite protests from parents and experts, Education Ministry goes ahead with the plan to extend compulsory institutionalized schooling onto six year olds. Are Polish schools ready for the reform? Is it going to make life better for children and parents?

Joanna Najfeld reports

The idea to impose compulsory schooling on 6 year old came quite unexpectedly. Education Minister Katarzyna Hall announced the idea in March. 6-year olds are to go to school, and in the future, kindergarten is to be made obligatory for 5-year olds.

'According to our plan, in three years, all Polish children will start institutionalized education at six years old, preceded by at least one year of kindergarten education,' said Education Minister Katarzyna Hall.

So far the law obliged parents to send kids to school at 7. They could choose institutionalized schooling for their kids earlier at no financial cost.

That's why many parents were surprised when the ministry suddenly announced compulsory education for 6 year olds, without proper public debate on the issue. This is against parents' rights and the good of the children, says Paweł Toboła-Pertkiewicz, a parents' rights activist: 'It seems that schoolkids are a kind of guinea-pigs of consecutive ministers who try their ideas and then parents have to bear fruits of these experiments. There was no debate on this particular proposition. The ministry just announced it, but parents simply don't agree.'

Paweł Toboła-Pertkiewicz collected several thousand petitions against the reform, citing parent's constitutional rights. He didn't even advertise his campaign. If he did, maybe the support would grow, because as one poll in the "Rzeczpospolita" daily showed, 60% of parents don't want 6 year olds forced into the school system, which is in an awful state and needs major improvements for children who are already there.

Teachers are underpaid, facilities run down, classes too crowdy and curricula not suited to the real educational needs of the children. No ministry is able to change that any time soon. This system is completely unprepared to cater for a lot of little children, says Tomasz Elbanowski, who started a Web-based campaign ratujmaluchy.pl (meaning "save the small ones") protesting the ministry's project. Education of small children is a fragile issue, it must not be approached carelessly, says Elbanowski: 'We protest because Polish schools are in majority not prepared to receive such small children. Just to mention toilets and all sanitary facilities not adopted to the hight of a 6-year old. Also, because of the time pressure, new textbooks might not appear on time and the ministry may not manage to educate new teachers. The cost of new infrastructure also is higher than the ministry is prepared to pay. The sum of 150 billion PLN mentioned by the ministry is far too little. Children are not guinea-pigs to make experiments on them, and these first steps at the beginning of education are very important for their further education.' 

Twenty one thousand people signed the protest at ratujmaluchy.pl. This campaign does not deny the idea of schooling at an early age, but only points out that the system is not prepared and it would be much better to develop a network of well-organized kindergartens suited to the needs of small children. Concerned parents complain they have had no feedback from the ministry, or anyone else from the government.

'The ministry doesn't want to talk with parents if they are against the reform. So now we turned to MPs to help with our protest. We wrote a letter to all MPs. We hope this will help, because the ministry doesn't want to hear any critique,' said Tomasz Elbanowski.