Przemysław Czarnek made the declaration in an interview with public broadcaster Polish Radio on Tuesday.
Asked how many children from Ukraine would attend Polish schools after the summer break, Czarnek said: “We are ready to receive a further 200,000 to 300,000 Ukrainian pupils in Polish schools.”
He added: “There is room for Ukrainian children in Polish schools; we are systemically prepared, we have a very flexible system in place, created together with local governments which run the schools.”
Czarnek cautioned that demand for school places may prove to be "too big" in large cities, such as the capital Warsaw or Kraków in the south, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
“In such cases, we’ll be recommending other schools where Ukrainian children may be admitted,” he said.
Most Ukrainian children taught online
Czarnek told Polish Radio that most Ukrainian refugee children based in Poland attended online classes "in the Ukrainian education system" during the previous school year.
“The remote schooling system functions in Ukraine and millions of pupils who stayed in Ukraine are also attending online lessons,” he added.
Czarnek said that, according to Polish government estimates, “there are some 700,000-800,000 Ukrainian children of school age in Poland; some 200,000 of them are enrolled in Polish schools, which means that about 500,000-600,000 attend online lessons in the Ukrainian system.”
Tuesday is day 167 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, forsal.pl