Five expert views on Poland’s new “slimmed down” school curriculum

By Richard Greenhill

At the beginning of July, Poland’s government introduced a new, “slimmed-down” curriculum for the new school year, which begins on 1 September.

The changes to the curriculum involve removing around 20% of existing material, which the education ministry says will give teachers and students “more time for calmer and in-depth” learning that focuses on “developing practical skills instead of theoretical or encyclopaedic knowledge”.

We asked five education experts for their views on the cuts to the curriculum.

“A step towards critical thinking”

Aneta Korycińska – Polish teacher and podcaster, produces videos under the pseudonym “Baba od polskiego”

The reduction of the curriculum by 20% has caused heated discussion as the changes it brings are not all positive.

Slimming down the curriculum could be beneficial as it is a step towards giving greater autonomy to teachers, who can now individualise the learning process, dedicate more time to people with non-typical educational needs, and choose lesson topics and set texts together with the class. It is also a step towards thinking about school as a place in which to practise critical thinking, speaking up and forming one’s own opinions.

Previously, it was difficult to implement these objectives as pupils preparing for the secondary-school leaving exam in Polish needed to know around 50 texts and have a grasp of literary history, language, literary theory and argumentation skills – in both speaking and writing. Such conditions make learning processes difficult, especially when classes have over 30 pupils and lessons boil down to an exam preparation course.

However, slimming down the curriculum is very risky: not only does it reduce the level of knowledge, but it also increases inequality in access to it.

Of course, each of these advantages and disadvantages can be refuted.

Teachers might not want autonomy and might teach and demand the same as before, despite the new exam requirements. So there’ll still be no time to become familiar with the material and practise skills of expressing ideas.

There is hope, however, that fears of a reduced teaching level are nothing other than fears. More thinking time will also bring more time for developing interests, gaining general knowledge and reducing the stress of school, which is one of the causes of teenage depression.

It is important to remember that reducing the curriculum alone will not improve Polish schools, because adding or removing set texts does not change the fact that school is still a preparation for the race for exam results, and not a place in which to grow at one’s own pace, learn to think, and improve writing skills.

Reducing curricula is merely one idea for dressing an open wound. But to heal education, we need a broad perspective and a multifaceted approach to reform.

“Cuts without clear criteria”

Krzysztof Biedrzycki – associate professor at the Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University; associate professor at the Educational Research Institute

The intervention described in the media as the “slimming down” of the core curriculum was essential.

The curriculum introduced by the [former ruling] United Right coalition in 2017 (primary schools) and 2019 (secondary schools) was criticised from the outset for being impossible to implement in full. In the briefest terms, it was governed by the principle: we are equipping young people with the maximum amount of knowledge they can take on in school so that everyone is ready to study any degree subject.

Of course, this is impossible. As a result, the curricula for each subject were overloaded with detailed knowledge often lagging behind scientific developments. Not only was it impossible to fully realise the objectives set by these documents, but important ones that were missing included independent thinking, problem solving, creative interpretation, reasoning, etc.

The new government had no choice but to intervene.

How is the “slimmed-down” curriculum different? Let’s start by saying that it is unclear how the 20% reduction of material was calculated. In the case of Polish, this meant almost exclusively taking away some of the numerous set texts.

Fewer set texts might give teachers more scope for in-depth discussion, and particularly interpretation. Also partly reduced will be the fiction of giving credit for set texts which pupils haven’t read. It all depends on how teachers treat the relaxation.

Unfortunately, just how material is to be reduced has not been made clear, for two reasons.

First, there has been a focus on cuts, without clear criteria for how they are to be made. It would have been better to start by setting a hierarchy of objectives and adapt to them what must stay in the curriculum.

Second, the work has been subordinated to the philosophy of examinations, meaning that the reduction was supposed to avoid interfering in exam procedures and exam requirements were not to be touched.

All of this causes concerns that for many teachers the changes are only formal amendments. The teaching methods will remain the same.

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“The reduced curriculum will lessen the sense of pressure”

Urszula Woźniak – vice-president of the general board of the Polish Teachers’ Union

Curricula were becoming more and more bloated, with constant additions being made without consideration of their practicality. Primary and secondary schools are not just for future university graduates, yet this is the kind of knowledge we have been teaching in schools.

Selected detailed requirements have been removed from curricula that were redundant at a given educational stage, or impossible or very hard to implement in practice in schools. The proposed reductions aim to give teachers and pupils more time to explore the topics left in the curriculum at greater leisure and more thoroughly.

It is important to stress that the slimmed-down curriculum is a short-term, transitional stage on the way to more comprehensive educational reform, geared towards developing practical skills, future competences including communication, self-education and self-management, teamwork skills and innovation, but also preparation for technological reality rather than theoretical knowledge or memory-based learning.

Bearing in mind the mental state of Polish school pupils, it seems that the reduced curriculum will lessen the sense of pressure and give them more time to develop their passions and interests, while they will still be able to gain detailed knowledge using digital tools, with creative application of technology.

“Overload was a fact, and slimming down a necessity”

Magdalena Radwan-Röhrenschef – educational sociologist, development director of the School of Education, president of the Good Education Foundation

The phrase “slimmed-down” has unfortunate connotations as it makes us think about quantity, not quality. Yet overload was a fact, and slimming down a necessity.

However, the changes are not simply about reduction of content, but about recognising and understanding the mechanism that is the source of the overloading problem. That mechanism is simple: for pupils to learn things, it is not sufficient to just be told them.

In education systems, the curriculum often means the standard – what every school graduate should leave with. If we try to cram the entire corpus of human knowledge into the school programme, we fail to check what (all) the pupils know of it – especially for longer than the first test.

Moreover, we lose sight of the most important thing: that knowledge is above all material for learning things that are far more necessary and difficult to teach – understanding, analysis, independent thinking. Of course, this can’t be taught without knowledge, so it makes no sense to pit knowledge against competences.

Polish schools have come a long way. In mathematics, we’ve gone from algorithmic teaching (how to calculate proportions) towards mathematical thinking (how to solve a problem). Here, this turn towards competences worked out extremely well. In other subjects, it needs more work.

In the existing curriculum, competences are included in the general requirements, but the attention of teachers, pupils and parents is focused on a Byzantian list of detailed requirements. These are what is to be slimmed down – and about time too.

“Cuts do not solve the underlying problem”

Marcin Szala – educator, co-founder of the school Liceum Artes Liberales

Two topics are sure to resurface in the public debate about education following every change of government in Poland. One: the need to update the list of set texts. Two: the need to slim down the curriculum. This is always accompanied by an equally established response: exams are getting easier and easier and the quality of education is diminishing.

Were the current government’s cuts needed? Yes.

A large portion of pupils seem unable to cover all material during classes and it is quite common to expect them to catch-up at home. By reducing content, there is a higher chance that everything can be covered in the classroom.

Do the cuts solve the underlying problem of the outdated model of education? In my opinion, no.

Under the current model, we are trying to create a uniform qualification for a diverse group of pupils who are being influenced by an environment that is hostile to learning (social media, numerous wellbeing concerns, bad diets and the widespread presence of psychoactive substances – to name but a few of the culprits).

On top of that, we are working with teaching content inherited from the previous century – an era that predates today’s ever-accessible internet and Wikipedia, not to mention generative Al.

Reduction in the content of the curriculum is a much-needed band-aid, but to address the root of the problem we must recognise that we need different types of qualifications reflecting the diversity of pupils – their abilities, chosen pathways and learning profiles.

In addition, we need to fundamentally reassess what the prescribed curriculum should be – starting with a debate about its framework (the balance between knowledge, competences and personal growth) upon which specific content and effective tools for real assessment could be developed.

Despite my experiences with previous education reforms in Poland, I remain hopeful that the current band-aid solution will stop the bleeding and enable a deep process of growth.

Main image credit: Tomasz Pietrzyk / Agencja Wyborcza.pl. Translated by Ben Koschalka

Richard Greenhill

Richard Greenhill is commissioning editor at Notes from Poland. He is an editor, proofreader and writer, who works with arts and culture organisations and publications based in Poland. He previously worked with Przekrój.