PiS wants to close secondary schools. However, the Poles will decide about it in a referendum

This year’s sixth graders will most likely not go to junior high schools next year. Law and Justice has announced the liquidation of three-year secondary schools. The PNA will intervene.

The head of the PiS Program Council, prof. Piotr Gliński. He announced that his party wanted to return to eight-year elementary school and four-year high school. – I think it is possible from September 1. However, it will be decided by the prime minister (Beata Szydło – ed.) And the new minister of education – said prof. Gliński., Adding that his party was ready for a referendum on the matter.

See also: Secondary schools for liquidation? Several thousand teachers may lose their jobs

Agencja Informacyjna Polska Press (AIP) has learned that the Polish Teachers’ Union intends on Friday to ask representatives of Law and Justice to meet and talk about the party’s idea for changes in the education system.

From a 2014 study by Homo Homini, 60 percent of of the respondents supported the liquidation of junior high schools. Teachers are also concerned about the idea of ​​introducing the “three times four” system. It assumes, inter alia, extending early childhood education by one year during eight years of primary education. Some educators indicate that such a solution will lower the level of teaching science, especially mathematics, for which initial teachers are not prepared. In addition, there is a change in the curriculum from “linear” to “spiral”, which assumes that the same topics will be repeated several times during the 12 years of education.

MP Piotr Gliński reassured on Thursday in radio Jedynka that there will be no mass layoffs of teachers, because the number of classes will remain unchanged, and talking about the layoffs is “trade union propaganda”. – It will be extinguishing, so that the children will not suffer from it – he said in the magazine “From the country and the world”.

– Teachers dismissed from lower secondary schools are unlikely to find employment in those primary schools that will take over students, because the additional hours will be taken over by teachers employed there in the first place – Magdalena Kaszulanis, spokeswoman for the Polish Teachers’ Union, told Polska Press Information Agency.

Kaszulanis reminds that we currently have a demographic decline, and for 5 years the teacher’s working time has been systematically reduced. – Full time is a luxury situation. If an additional year comes and there will be, for example, one hour more geography, chemistry or physics, the school will certainly not employ a teacher of these subjects, even for financial reasons, but will commission these hours as overtime hours to a teacher who lacks a few hours to full-time – explains the spokeswoman.

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ZNP published on its website “5 reasons why lower secondary schools should not be closed”. He mentions among them that the liquidation of lower secondary schools will not solve “the existing problems”, but will become a source of new ones, generating tension and anxiety among both parents and students. “Gymnasiums need to be supported, among others by employing psychologists, educators, creating less numerous classes, ”reads the statement.

The union also points out that the liquidation of three-year secondary schools will result in mass layoffs of teachers and school workers. Such a step will also generate additional costs related to e.g. with the introduction of new programs, textbooks and the preparation of schools.
According to the Union, the PiS idea will introduce chaos in the core curricula, which have recently been changed, and in the system of external examinations.

“Research shows that middle schools are not as bad as they paint them. The results of junior high school students are absolutely not in favor of their liquidation. According to the international PISA 2012 survey, there has been a significant improvement in the results of Polish junior high school students in all three areas covered by the study, making Poland one of the leading countries in the European Union! ” – we read on the Association’s website.

The liquidation of lower secondary schools also causes costs. According to Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska, head of the Ministry of Education in Ewa Kopacz’s office, the liquidation of junior high schools means the need to rewrite the core curriculum for each of the twelve classes. – It is a great effort for several years, also financial. It will be necessary to write new textbooks, and this is another gigantic cost – she told Money.pl

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– The liquidation of junior high schools means that where the school works in two shifts, you will have to cram your knees into two years of children who are in junior high school today. So two years of age are returning to old buildings – says the minister of education. As she estimates, this may mean that tens of thousands of lower secondary school teachers will lose their jobs and will also drop out of the profession. Because principals of primary and secondary schools will first try to find their teachers who work part-time due to the deep low. A side cost may also be an increase in the number of classes, with a loss to the quality of teaching – believes Kluzik-Rostkowska.

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