By Pedro Campos
As the world celebrated World Refugee Day recently, we reflect on the more recent refugee crisis in Europe – that of the refugees as a result of the war in Ukraine – and the effect on children and schooling. Poland is the main refugee-receiving country of people fleeing Ukraine, with a stake over 60% or almost 3.7 million people. Following the pattern, almost all refugees from Ukraine arriving in the country are women, children and older people. The family separation resulting in large numbers of unaccompanied and separated children and single parents. Detailed information provided by UNHCR (2022) points out that between the 1.1 million Ukrainian refugees who have registered for temporary protection in Poland, 48% are women over 17 years old and 47% are children under 18 years old. Nearly 1/3 of these children are under six years old, of whom almost half are under the age of three.
Effective access to childcare and early education opportunities is unquestionably one of the most pressing needs facing refugee families, many of whom face prolonged separation from husbands and fathers. Considering this, the Polish Education Minister, Przemysław Czarnek, has pledged that the schools are ready to accept hundreds of thousands of children fleeing the war in Ukraine. Although, local authorities have raised concern over whether the system can cope with the influx. It is a fact that the considerable number of new pupils who are predicted to join the schools will put a significant strain on the Polish Educational System already hit by shortages of teachers. Kindergartens in host communities are under enormous strain, while public childcare facilities are either non-existent or unable to respond to the existing needs of host communities. Czarnek, however, assured that there is a large amount of school infrastructure available to create appropriate conditions for arriving Ukrainian children (Koschalka, 2022; Ptak, 2022b; UNHCR, 2022).
The Minister has published information for new arrivals from Ukraine wanting to sign their children up to school. Pupils aged between 7 and 18 have the right to a place at the school in whose catchment area they are currently residing on the same basis as their Polish peers. Their parents or guardians should submit applications to that school. He also highlights that “school superintendents have made lists of teachers who know Ukrainian and Russian, and these are available to headteachers”. University rectors will coordinate lists of students able to assist teachers, for example by translating. The ministry has published information for people wanting to register their children at schools and plans to draft in students to help with translation (Koschalka, 2022), as well as hiring teachers to teach Polish to the Ukrainian children and assistant teachers to do translations.
In the Polish Educational System, foreign children starting school who do not know Polish have two tracks available: enroll in normal Polish classes or to attend special preparatory classes in order to learn the language and integrate into the system. Though it is possibly more viable the second option is not always feasible especially in schools that are already overstretched with high levels of teacher vacancies (Koschalka, 2022; Ptak, 2022b). More often, Ukrainian pupils are accommodated within existing classes, even when they are unable to speak Polish (Ptak, 2022b). One solution to the problem would be schools being set up in Poland teaching the Ukrainian curriculum – and some have already begun to do this. However, these are small-scale, privately funded initiatives that would be difficult to scale up (Ptak, 2022b).
Materynka is a school that has been teaching the Ukrainian curriculum from several makeshift locations around Warsaw. Before the war, the school had about 200 pupils who are largely children of migrants who had come to the Polish Capital to work. More recently, it has around 1.000 children (Economist, 2022). In Kraków, over 200 Ukrainian refugee children have started classes at the first school in the city to offer the Ukrainian National Curriculum in full – including diplomas –, allowing them to continue their education. The foundation behind the project, Unbreakable Ukraine Foundation, is liaising with UNICEF to cover the salaries of 26 Ukrainian teachers and a School Principal. (Ptak, 2022a).
The integration of Ukranian children in Polish schools appears to be taking place with notable enthusiasm and receptiveness, as well as an openness to learn and understand the culture and language among the children. Though language can create a barrier for integration, children are creative by nature and their will to make new friends and to know each other is bigger than this obstacle.