Hundreds of Polish children have been reported as missing from classes in the one year since schools went online, according to local authorities.
A survey last year by Warsaw city hall of almost all schools under its authority found that staff had been unable to contact 604 children after the start of remote learning in March. Nearly half (286) were from primary schools.
Schools had tried to reach the students through their parents, friends, and social media, as well as going to the police, social welfare officers and making in-person visits to their houses. However, all attempts at contact in those 604 cases had failed.
That situation has since improved, but there are still 170 students reported to be missing from classes in the capital, according to Gazeta Wyborcza.
Similar issues were also reported last year in Poznań, where 200 children were unaccounted for, and in Kraków, writes the newspaper. However, despite these local findings, the education ministry does not compile any data on the national extent of the problem.
A nationwide report on education during the pandemic, conducted between March and October last year by an NGO, Centrum Cyfrowe, found that 48% of teachers in primary, secondary and technical schools reported that at least one student had dropped out of their classes.
When asked about the issue at a parliamentary educational committee meeting last May, the then education minister, Dariusz Piontkowski (now deputy minister), said that it was the responsibility of school officials and teachers to contact absent students.
“It is not the minister who will be walking around houses and checking why a student is absent from lessons,” he said, quoted by TVN.
In January this year, Poland’s human rights commissioner, Adam Bodnar, wrote to the new education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, stressing that “further research is needed on the scale of the phenomenon of exclusion of students from the system”.
In response to increasing absenteeism, last year the EFC Foundation, which promotes education, launched a social media campaign, #sprawdzobecnosc (#checkpresence), encouraging young people to check up on friends if they noticed they were missing from lessons.
Another concern has been over “digital exclusion“, with some children – especially from poorer families and in rural areas – suffering from a lack of access to the necessary equipment and resources for online learning.
In the city of Łódź, initially 2,500 students were reported to be missing from online lessons during the first lockdown. This was attributed to internet access issues, and the situation subsequently improved.
“In spring, when remote lessons were just beginning, not all children had equipment or good internet,” Danuta Krysiak, director of Primary School No. 184 in Łódź, told Gazeta Wyborcza.
The government has moved to introduce subsidies to help pupils, parents and teachers equip themselves for online learning, including a special fund for children from low-income farming families.
There have also been concerns over the mental and physical wellbeing of pupils, most of whom have been learning remotely for almost the entire time since last March. Schools opened in September, but closed again in October, since when only the youngest three year groups have been allowed to return.
A recent survey on children’s responses to online learning, ordered by the commissioner for children’s rights, found that 49% of students aged between 15 and 18 said that online learning had had a negative effect on their physical health, with 50% reporting the same for their mental health.
“This issue must be constantly monitored”, Dorota Łoboda, an educational rights activist, told Gazeta Wyborcza. She also noted that remote learning made it harder for teachers to spot signs of abuse against their pupils.
The education minister, Czarnek, recently pledged to introduce a series of measures to support the wellbeing of pupils. Last week, he unveiled a programme for improving their physical fitness, and on Thursday he launched a new system of psychological support for pupils and teachers.
Fifteen million zloty will be spent on the latter programme by the end of this year, with Czarnek saying that it will tackle issues including “deterioration of wellbeing”, “mood disorders”, “abuse of electronic media”, and “teacher overload [through] remove education”, reports Polskie Radio.
In the coming weeks, the education ministry is due to announce further programmes designed to help pupils catch up with gaps in knowledge once they return to in-person learning, as well as to tackle sight disorders.
Main image credit: Nenad Stojkovic/Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)
Juliette Bretan is a freelance journalist covering Polish and Eastern European current affairs and culture. Her work has featured on the BBC World Service, and in CityMetric, The Independent, Ozy, New Eastern Europe and Culture.pl.
