Fewer Polish schools teaching Russian: report

Some 203,500 students are learning Russian at Polish schools, down from over 217,000 last year, and the number of schools offering Russian language classes is also decreasing, according to officials.

Around 203,000 students are learning Russian at Polish schools, down from 217,000 last year, according to officials.

PAP/Marcin Bielecki

The latest statistics were published by Poland's Rzeczpospolita newspaper on Thursday. 

This school year, Russian is being taught at 2,494 educational establishments, including 1,136 primary schools and 1,333 secondary schools, across Poland, a drop of 113 from the year before, the paper reported.

Meanwhile, the number of school students taking Russian classes fell to 203,523 this year, from 217,245 in the 2021/2022 academic year, the Polish education ministry said. 

The number of Russian-language teachers at Polish schools decreased from 2,440 to 2,286 over the same period, Rzeczpospolita reported. 

Język rosyjski w polskich szkołach? W tym roku szkolnym trudno było nawet skompletować grupy chętnych. https://t.co/57ZuC96WFp

— Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (@DGPrawna) February 27, 2023

More Polish schools deciding to stop teaching Russian

Compared with the spring of last year, fewer Polish schools are offering Russian classes, the paper said.

It reported that "the fall has not been drastic," but it said more schools were deciding to stop teaching Russian amid the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.

Rzeczpospolita noted that under communism, Russian was a compulsory subject in Polish schools before being gradually replaced, from the early 1990s onwards, by languages such as English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

However, this was not the case everywhere, according to the paper. Data shows that schools in eastern Poland were more willing to offer Russian classes, it said.

The decision as to which modern foreign languages should be taught at a given school rests with the principal, Rzeczpospolita said.

Adrianna Całus-Polak, a spokeswoman for Poland’s education ministry, told Rzeczpospolita that the ministry "does not interfere" in such decisions, which she said "should be taken locally, depending on organisational potential and human resources.”

Całus-Polak added that "the choice of foreign language is restricted only in the case of the primary-school leaving exam and the matura high-school-leaving tests, which can only include the six most popular modern foreign languages, namely English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish.”  

Thursday is day 372 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

(pm/gs)

Source: PAP, rp.pl