Preschools can give priority in recruitment to vaccinated children, top Polish court rules

Preschools are allowed to give priority in recruitment to children who are vaccinated, Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court has ruled.

The judgement settles a dispute in the city of Częstochowa, which is one of many in Poland that have tried to ban or restrict the entry of unvaccinated children to preschools and nurseries. Recent years have seen rapidly rising numbers of parents refusing to give obligatory vaccinations to their children.

Recruitment to public preschools in Poland, which accept children aged three and above and are compulsory for six-year-olds, employs a points system. As well as criteria such as number of children in the family or any disabilities, municipalities can award points for factors such as the place of residence and whether both parents are working.

In January 2019, city councillors in Częstochowa decided that children who had received all mandatory vaccinations – or had a medical reason for not having done so – should receive an additional 20 points.

That made it the second most important criterion after parents’ employment status, and in practice meant that unvaccinated children would not be admitted to public preschools, reports Dziennik Zachodni.

The councillors’ resolution, however, was subsequently declared invalid by Jarosław Wieczorek, the governor of Silesia Province and a government appointee, who argued that it unfairly discriminated against non-vaccinated children.

“A declaration that a child has had mandatory vaccinations…cannot be seen to have the objective of taking into account the needs of the child…or the needs of its family,” said his office. The council “has no legal basis to set regulations…concerning the obligation for protective vaccinations”.

Wieczorek, a member of the nationally ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, had also rejected a resolution in 2015 requiring all candidates to preschools and nurseries in the city to be immunised on data protection grounds, reports Gazeta.pl.

The Supreme Administrative Court, which is Poland’s court of last resort in administrative cases, has now ruled in favour of the council’s resolution and against the governor. The decision, a justification for which is not yet available, is final and not subject to appeal.

The ruling was celebrated by Jolanta Urbańska, the deputy chair of Częstochowa city council, who initiated the resolution that was overturned by Wieczorek.

“No more polio! No more measles! No more smallpox!” wrote Urbańska, a member of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s largest opposition party.

“Discrimination would be indicating what religion a child is, its skin colour, what kind of family it comes from,” she told TVN24. “But whether a child is vaccinated is not something that discriminates the child, but is simply the realisation of the existing legal order in Poland.”

“This is not blocking the path for those parents who do not submit such declarations [on vaccinations] – they will just have fewer points and may have to send their children to other preschools,” said Włodzimierz Tutaj, spokesman for Częstochow city hall, which is under opposition control.

Częstochowa is not the only city with such rules. Gdańsk, Katowice and Poznań also offer bonus points for vaccinations, reports TVN24.

In Warsaw, an extra 32 points have been on offer for mandatory immunisations since last year. The rules for state nurseries in the capital are even stricter, with an up-to-date vaccination card being obligatory for admissions.

In recent years, Poland, like many other countries, has seen a growing “anti-vax” movement. Whereas in 2010 there were only 3,437 cases of parents refusing to vaccinate their children, by 2019 that had risen to 48,609.

Measles is a particular concern, with UNICEF warning that vaccination of children against the disease has fallen so low in Poland that the country has lost herd immunity.

Main image credit: Charles Deluvio/Unsplash

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.