Kid moves back to Poland for better education

[HenryLB]

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Ignoring for a moment the fact that this piece is from the Daily Mail, I thought it was quite interesting. Are we just so sated as a society that we have ceased to worry about the world? Or is it more a case of being purposely kept from thinking by a constant diet of glittery consumerised celebrity shit?

Personally I'm often quite struck by the level of engagement kids seem to have with current affairs and serious issues, but I'm also sometimes struck dumb by the sheer ignorance of some people. Having said that I don't spend a lot of time in schools, so what I want to know is: is the picture Aleksander Kucharski paints accurate?

[alexi]

A quote from a mate of mine......

This isn't that uncommon. My mother earns a few extra quid translating for the local authority so she meets a lot Poles and a lot have said how poor they find the British education system. Apparently a lot of the kids are having problems because the things they are being taught they've already learned 2 or 3 years ago in Poland so they are going over old stuff and they are bored.

[Johnpoland]

I taught English in Poland for a couple of years, at private schools so I have no direct impression of the education system there as such, but from what students told me about their schools and the general impression they gave me of their knowledge, I'd say the Polish (Secondary) system is 'old-fashioned' by UK standards but at the same time more 'serious'.

One major difference was that schools there tend to specialise, not just between academic/non-academic subjects, but also in terms of science/arts. They also have a competitive/selective entry system, so primary school kids know they have to try a bit if they want to score enough points to get into the High School of their choice. On one hand this means the most academic and motivated individuals at that age end up working together and pushing each other, although I suspect some later developers miss out.

I'm not sure I think the Polish (or Central European, because Hungary and Slovakia, where I also worked, were more or less the same) model is inherently superior to what we have here, but it might not be 100% coincidental that Polish kids start school at the age of six/seven and seem to learn as much by the time they're eighteen as kids in the UK with an extra year or two.