Poland

The situation facing the Ministry of Education after the Polish Round Table in 1989 can be described as follows: -a strongly centralized educational system with almost no decisions taken at the individual level; -no private schooling; -a vague hierarchy of responsibility caused by the local education authorities being subjected to local administration rather than to the Ministry of Education; -overloaded school curricula and propaganda textbooks for fragmented subject areas; -absence of modern languages other than Russian from the curricula of primary and postprimary vocational schools covering 80 percent of the age group in question; -shortages of teachers in virtually every subject area; and -dominance of vocational training over general education (more than half of fifteen-year-olds leaving primary school were channeled into three-year vocational schools offering no certificates of secondary education and, consequently, giving no right to enter tertiary educational institutions)

Geography · Political science · Regional science · Sociology · Education in Diverse Contexts · Global Education Systems and Policies · Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities