Poland’s education ministry is training intercultural assistants to help with the increased number of Ukrainian students starting school in the new academic year in September.
At the start of this month, a law was introduced making it a requirement for Ukrainian refugee children to attend school if they are to receive child benefits. Until now, many have remained outside the Polish education system, often instead learning remotely with Ukrainian teachers.
“We are doing our best to make Polish schools as prepared as possible [to receive more Ukrainian students],” said education minister Barbara Nowacka in an interview with Polskie Radio.
She noted that estimates “vary greatly” on how many Ukrainian children in Poland are currently outside the education system, ranging between 70,000 and 180,000. Currently there are around 100,000 Ukrainian refugee children attending Polish schools, she added.
“Polish teachers have taken a very responsible approach to the task during the refugee crisis,” said the minister. “I know that this is the way they would approach it now as well, but we want to support them, so we are training and preparing intercultural assistants.”
“We had to make this difficult decision to enforce compulsory education,” added Nowacka. “These children have been studying online for four years – first because of the pandemic and then the war…As a state, we have a duty to provide a good level of education. We cannot allow children not to be able to read and write.”
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The intercultural assistants will be tasked with helping pupils who do not have a sufficient level of Polish. They would also be expected to coordinate between the parents of foreign students and the school, reports education news service Portal Oświatowy.
Many Polish schools have already employed assistants to help non-Polish children, especially after large numbers of Ukrainian refugees began arriving in 2022.
Asked how the intercultural assistants would differ, the education ministry told Notes from Poland that they would have the task of “primarily diagnosing stages of culture shock and barriers to adaptation and integration and taking preventive and corrective measures”.
Around 200,000 Ukrainian refugees have joined schools in Poland, with most placed in regular Polish classes and thousands taking exams in Polish this month
That approach has faced criticism from those who say it places unfair demands on schools and pupils https://t.co/omibLrBPQz
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Main image credit: Sylwia Penc / Agencja Wyborcza.pl
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
