Regional schools set to get boost under planned reforms: science minister

Gowin said that tertiary schools will be categorised so that small regional schools will not have to compete with Warsaw’s top universities for funding.

He added that plans to even the playing field include “giving regional schools an additional PLN 100 million (EUR 24 million) for research each year”.

Gowin also said that funding would be in the form of endowments rather than grants, which will allow universities to spend more flexibly and effectively.

The plan also covers wages for academic staff, which will be relative to the average wage, rather than the minimum, "so the academic environment can benefit from nation-wide economic growth".

As such, professors, for instance, will earn at least PLN 7,100 gross, or 150 percent of the national monthly average.

The new plans also include “the most radical” lustration procedures of all laws in Poland’s 28 years since the fall of communism, banning anyone who worked with communist-era security services from being an academic professor or holding a role in influential school administration bodies.

But academics have said the changes will affect very few people as most have already undergone previous lustrations and possible ties with the previous regime affect only the oldest staff, who are gradually retiring from education.

Gowin said that after four months of consultations, the government has ditched earlier plans to prolong external education courses, as well as plans to give the higher education minister the right to close courses that “do not address local or regional socio-economic needs”.

Gowin said the planned reform will be put before parliament next month. (vb)

Source: IAR, PAP