Poland

Abstract

Polish education reforms begun in 1999 have helped dramatically raise that nation’s performance on international examinations. Broad goals set by Poland’s education ministry included improving the overall education level of Polish citizens, equity, and implementing national standards with local autonomy. As part of the new reforms, Poland required students to spend more time on core academics, introduced a national exam system, changed school governance, and expanded communications. Yet the author also said the global lesson of Poland is that it would be unwise for other countries to attempt to adopt the Polish measures whole-scale but rather to adapt parts of the program that might work best for them.