Polish government makes it harder for kids to get PE sicknotes

The Polish government is making it harder for children to obtain permission from doctors to be excused from physical education classes. It is also introducing a pilot programme to regularly test children during such lessons, including monitoring their body mass index (BMI).

In an interview with RMF FM, sports minister Kamil Bortniczuk was asked about the high proportion of children who do not take part in PE classes. A 2013 report by the Supreme Audit Office (NIK), a state body, found that in the high-school PE lessons it checked, 30% of pupils were absent.

“These statistics will be drastically reduced because [medical] exemptions from PE classes for a semester or longer will be respected only if they are issued by a specialist doctor, and not by a family doctor as before,” said Bortniczuk.

He noted that the change was being introduced by the education ministry and would go into force on 1 September this year, when schools reopen after the summer holidays.

The minister also announced that from the same date a pilot programme known as the National Talent Database is being introduced in two of Poland’s 16 provinces.

It will oblige PE teachers to conduct tests each semester that will help identify children with sporting talent, but which will also be “a great tool to monitor how many kids attend PE, how many do not undergo these tests, how many have problems with BMI”, said Bortniczuk.

Some critics, however, argued that the government’s planned changes fail to address the reasons why some children do not want to attend PE and noted that the regular testing would make such children even more uncomfortable.

Main image credit: Vince Fleming/Unsplash

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.