Segregation in Polish schools is widespread – says a report prepared by scientists and teachers from the “Experience and Future” group. Pupils are divided at the start of the school year – those from low income families are grouped in one class and those from richer families in another. The practice has caused an outcry from education experts.

Krysia Kołosowska reports 

The segregation mechanism is simple. Parents are asked to fill in forms in which they have to provide information about their work place, post, salary and even housing conditions. On their basis the offspring of lawyers, engineers and doctors are assigned to one class, while children of shop assistants, manual workers and the jobless land up in a different class. Pupils are also divided into clever ones and those with learning problems.

One of the reasons is that schools want to be placed high in regional or national ranking lists of the best schools. Teachers say this helps them to organize their work better and prevent poor pupils from dragging down those who are more talented. A study conducted by a university expert four years ago revealed that pupils are segregated in terms of materials status in one out of five public primary schools.

Deputy education minister Zbigniew Marciniak says the education authorities are determined to combat segregation at school: ‘We need an educational campaign, which will show what the effects of such practices are. It will give headmasters arguments to oppose demands by some parents, who want to create better classes for their children.’

Michal Boni, a senior official in the prime minister’s office, stresses that schools should help create equal opportunities for all pupils, rather than segregating them into better and poorer ones: ‘It is not the role of Polish school to separate poor children from richer ones. If we talk about extra lessons enabling poor students to catch up with the others, this is not segregation but help.’

Pupils themselves feel there is something basically wrong if the school authorities and parents try to create divisions between them, especially on the basis of material well-being: ‘I think this is wrong because it will an effect on their future lives. I’ve heard about this kind of treatment in other schools in Poland, that there is segregation for bright people and children from poor families are treated worse than those from richer one. It’s like prejudice. Creating ghettoes. People who were in the worst class will feel that they are worse than other people.’

Headmasters admit that very often parents force the school authorities to divide pupils – they don’t want their kids to mix with children who have a different social background. Such practices happen in almost all Polish cities and are especially vivid on the outskirts of big urban agglomerations, where children of local farmers mix at school with kids from middle class families, who moved to houses out of town.