The Polish comprehensive education is compulsory and consists of six years of elementary school (ISCED 1), which is followed by three years of lower secondary schoolgimnazjum (ISCED 2). Elementary school and gimnazjum usually serve the same community of students, but they are separated entities, with different managerial and teaching bodies.
After finishing the comprehensive part, student may finish their education or continue in academic, mixed or vocational higher secondary school (ICED 3).
The admission to elementary school andgimnazjum is identical. It is based on catch-ment areas, which means that every student has a right to attend an assigned local public school and this school has to accept her. Because there are more elementary schools than gimnazja,3 the catchment area for the later is usually larger and contains
2This policy is in effect in Chile and the Netherlands, seeBöhlmark et al.(2015).
3Most of elementary schools were constructed during the past 50 years, whilegimnazjaonly after 1999.
The network of elementary schools thus reflects the past demographic situation and it is considered as too dense. The network of gimnazja, in turn, is more "rational" in the sense that it is better
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the catchment areas from several elementary schools. Table1shows ratio of elementary schools togimnazja in a rural-urban breakdown. In the rural areas there are on average 2.3 elementary school per gimnazjum and almost 1.5 in the urban areas. As an alter-native to the local school, parents may request a place in an under-subscribed non-local school, but the admission is not granted. The are no universal recruitment rules for non-local students. Each school’s policy is determined by school principal and a recruitment committee, which usually consists of selected teachers and school psychologist.
In theory the classroom assignment is similar for elementary schools and gimnazja.
There are no universal rules and the assignment is determined by school principals and the recruitment committee, which create own list of criteria (often conflicting).
As for gimnazja, the most common rules are that classes should be equal in terms of student performance, gather students with similar GPA, with similar foreign language proficiency or from the same neighborhood (Szmigel, 2013). Usually parents have a right to suggest an alternative class assignment. Elementary schools, in turn, cannot sort students based on their performance (it is unknown), so usually use place of living, gender, special needs, date of birth and parental preferences as criteria. In 2010 there were no limits for classroom size.4 Importantly, the assignment is fixed across grades, subjects and reallocation across classes is allowed only in special situations. Hence, the peer composition of classes is usually constant within each stage of education.
During the comprehensive education, students are examined by two standardized, externally graded and obligatory examinations: a low stake after elementary school (6th grade) and a high stake after gimnazjum (9th grade).5 The school averages from these exams are published in various unofficial school rankings. The only official measure of school quality is the school-level educational value added, but it is only available for gimnazja.6
There are clear economies of scale for school principals of elementary school and gimnazja. All Polish public schools are financed by the central government through a subsidy. In theory this amount should be sufficient to cover all expenditures on edu-cation, excluding investments and pre-school education. In practice, however, it covers
adjusted to the current demographic needs. In addition, elementary schools serve younger children for whom distance to a school matter more than for older children.
4Since 2015 the rules in elementary schools have been unified and are based on the date of birth with an option for parents to request an alternative assignment. Since 2013 a class in grades I-III can have maximum 25 students.
5The 9th grade exam serves as a basis for the admission into the higher secondary education (ISCED 3).
6It is widely available only since 2009. The Ministry of Education publishes also annual level-based rankings of the higher secondary school.
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only around 50-70% of the costs (Herbst, Herczyński and Levitas,2009;Instytut Badań Edukacyjnych, 2011) and the rest is covered by local governments. Since the govern-mental subsidy is stuck to the student (the money goes with her), the amount of school funds depends on enrollment. In addition, school principal might gain more local po-litical power from larger schools, which might be crucial for securing additional funds from the municipality government. These, together with a negative population growth threatening existence of many public schools, motivate schools to increase their enroll-ment. Classroom assignment is a potential mean of competition for students. Sorting can be used to attract more high achievers, to attract high quality teachers or to im-prove quality of education by tailoring the teaching practice. On the other hand, mixing students might improve educational equality of opportunity and thus be preferred by principals and policymakers.
The teacher wages and general employment conditions are mostly determined by mu-nicipality governments (not by school principals) in compliance with the universal col-lective bargaining agreements (Karta Nauczyciela). Salary has to be at least as large as a minimum wage determined for each teacher’s rank inKarta Nauczyciela.7 In addition, teachers may receive extra salary for working over-time, monetary awards and other non-monetary benefits, for instance accommodation in school’s social apartments.
7In 2015 the minimum monthly gross wages ranged from 1513 PLN (340 EUR) to 3109 (700 EUR).
Additionally, local municipalities have to make sure that the average total gross salary for each tacher’s rank within municipality is at least as large as specified inKarta Nauczciela. In 2015 these averages ranged from 2717 PLN (612 EUR) to 5000 PLN (1126 EUR).
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Table 1: Comparison of the Rural and Urban areas in Poland.
Variable Rural Urban
Total Numbers
Elementary Schools (2012) 8604 4092
Gimnazja(2012) 3722 2748
Elementary School perGimnazja(2012) 2.31 1.49
Averages for Municipalities
Elementary School perkm2(2010) 0.028 0.21
Gimnazjumperkm2(2010) 0.01 0.18
Children per Elementary School (2010) 156 337
Children perGimnazjum(2010) 186 207
Public Transportation perkm2(2007) .071 1.656
Tertiary Education Share (2002) 4% 11%
Population Density (2010) 166 1676
Population (2010) 10067 156004
Number of Municipalities 2386 93
Source: the Central Statistical Office of Poland and Herczyński & Sobotka (2013). Urban = population > 50 000.