2020 education targets: Poland aiming high [fr]

Background

Reducing the share of early school leavers and ensuring that more youngsters have a degree or diploma is one of the five priorities of a draft ten-year economic plan unveiled by the European Commission in March, called 'Europe 2020' (EurActiv 03/03/10).

The strategy defines five headline targets at EU level, which member states will be asked to translate into national goals reflecting their differing starting points:

• Raising the employment rate of the population aged 20-64 from the current 69% to 75%.
• Raising the investment in R&D to 3% of the EU's GDP.
• Meeting the EU's '20/20/20' objectives on greenhouse gas emission reduction and renewable energies.
• Reducing the share of early school leavers from the current 15% to under 10% and making sure that at least 40% of youngsters have a degree or diploma.
• Reducing the number of Europeans living below the poverty line by 25%, lifting 20 million out of poverty from the current 80 million.

In a series of articles, the EurActiv network will present the state of play in individual EU countries on each of the targets. This series looks at how member states react to education targets.

The EurActiv network already found that Eastern countries are doubtful about the poverty reduction target and face an uphill battle to attain the climate goals (EurActiv 06/05/10; EurActiv 16/07/10), while most Eastern European member states will adopt R&D targets below the EU-wide goal of 3% of GDP (EurActiv 04/06/10).

More on this topic

Both education targets in the new 'Europe 2020' strategy – reducing the share of early school leavers to below 10% and increasing the proportion of youngsters with tertiary education qualifications to at least 40% by 2020 – have been welcomed by Poland.

Yet the country's education authorities want to go even further and have set themselves more ambitious targets.

The current share of early school leavers in Poland is just 5% of the student population and there are plans to reduce it by a further half percentage point.

As for tertiary education, it wants to attain a higher rate than the EU-wide goal – i.e. 45% instead of 40% of citizens with a higher education degree by 2020.

According to data for 2008, 29.7% of 30-34-year old Poles hold a higher education qualification.

However, there are EU education benchmarks outside of the Europe 2020 strategy – set by the European Commission – where Poland falls below the member state average.

For example, the proportion of children between the age of three and five who attend kindergarten (early childhood education) has increased from 44% to 60% over the past three years, but the EU average is over 90%. Poland has a lot to do if it is to reach this threshold.

Another problem is lifelong learning among adults aged between 25 and 64. The EU average is 9.5%, while in Poland it is only 4.7%. The Commission aims for an average figure of 15% by 2020. For Poland, this area constitutes another extremely difficult challenge.

The Polish system

Since changes to the system in 2009, education in Poland begins at the age of five or six for the '0' class (kindergarten) and six or seven for the first year of primary school. Children must complete one year of formal education before entering primary school.

On leaving primary school, pupils take a compulsory exam to determine which lower secondary school they can attend. After three years, they sit another exam to determine their upper secondary school. The most common higher education choices are three years in a liceum (high school) or four years in a technikum (vocational secondary school).

In Poland, education is free of charge until university. State universities are also free. Before 1990, there were only state higher education institutions in Poland, with the exception of the Catholic University of Lublin. The 'Higher Education Act' then enabled the creation of non-state institutions. When the 'Schools of Higher Professional Education Act' came into force in 1997, courses for professional higher education were established.

There are 131 state-owned higher education institutions in Poland and 326 private ones. The total number of students in tertiary education is 1.92 million, of which 612,000 study in private institutions.

According to experts, the most significant problem in the Polish system is the huge proportion of extramural and evening students – they constitute more than 50% of the total number. This is the major reason for the low quality of Polish higher education, they say.

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