Tens of thousands of new Ukrainian students begin school in Poland after attendance is tied to benefits.
Tens of thousands of new Ukrainian students are starting school in Poland today after the government mandated that refugee children from Ukraine must enroll in the Polish education system to receive benefits.
The education ministry estimates that between 20,000 and 80,000 new Ukrainian students will now be attending school in Poland.
To accommodate the influx, the government claims to have implemented measures such as Ukrainian-speaking classroom assistants and additional Polish language lessons. However, some reports suggest that school principals and teachers feel unprepared for this transition.
Polish schools have been open to Ukrainian children since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but parents were previously allowed to continue their children’s Ukrainian education remotely.
As of April this year, around 275,000 Ukrainian children were enrolled in the Polish education system, while an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 were not. Overall, the Polish school system includes approximately 4.7 million children of all nationalities.
In May, parliament passed legislation requiring Ukrainian refugee children to attend Polish schools from the start of the new school year in September in order to qualify for child benefits.
An exception is made for students in the final stage of the Ukrainian education system, allowing them to complete their studies online instead of attending Polish schools.