“The education system in Poland can take up to 400,000 children from Ukraine”, said the Deputy Minister of Education and Science Tomasz Rzymkowski.

According to the data presented on Monday, May 30, by the Border Guard, 3.7 million people have crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border since the beginning of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, i.e. February 24. During this time, almost 1.7 million people returned from Poland to Ukraine.

According to the estimates of the Polish government, about 1.5 million people are considering staying in Poland for longer. However, according to the data of the Ukrainian officials, 540 thousand Ukrainian children in Poland, are learning remotely from Ukraine.

“In my opinion, the Ukrainian side is not able to fully confirm these data” – said Deputy Minister Rzymkowski. He admitted that these children probably crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border and that they can now stay in Sweden, Germany or northern Italy. It is all very flexible”, he added.

According to the deputy head of the Ministry of Education, “a very large number of refugees from Ukraine assume that they will return to their homeland in the case of an end or fading of the conflict”. Therefore, “more Ukrainian children in Western Europe benefit from remote education, which means that they will return to Ukraine, and do not benefit from the education of the country in which they have found shelter at the moment”.

According to Tomasz Rzymkowski, currently, there are 195,000 children from Ukraine in Polish schools. “Poland is prepared for twice as much”, he added.

“I believe that there will be fewer of these children, but it is better to be safe than sorry and be prepared for a larger number of children”, said Rzymkowski, and as an example, he gave the statistics of the eighth-grade exams that 7,200 Ukrainians were supposed to take but only 6,200 did in fact.

Adrian Andrzejewski