(Un)intended consequences of the 2016 educational reform on early childhood education and care in Poland. The story of a few applications that led to significant disorder

Abstract

Merton’s law on unintended consequences (1936) warns against the undesirable and unanticipated outcomes of every action and policy. More recent research (Zhao, 2017) in the field of education, in relation to Merton, claims that these consequences are usually treated as inconvenient side effect of a policy, but are, in fact, planned by policy-makers or other stakeholders to benefit them. It is therefore more appropriate to call them ‘(un)intended consequences’, which are not written into the policy but are a result of how the policy translates into practice. This paper, in relation to the above approaches, aims at revealing (un)intended consequences and hidden agendas of the educational reform conducted by the Polish government in 2016, with a special focus on their impact on ECEC. (Un)intended consequences are investigated here in four dimensions, including ECEC: organisational changes, curriculum, management and educators.

 The paper is based on the review of literature and on the author’s qualitative and quantitative research among parents, teachers and representatives of local authorities, carried out in the 2018/2019 school year.

Introduction and theoretical frameworks

In Poland, as in western European countries, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is at the top on the policy agenda (Lewis, 2006; Moss, 2006). Thus, over the past dozen years, this field has experienced both direct changes – the ones aimed at the field – and indirect changes introduced at higher educational stages, but with some significant impact on the field. Some of these public sector innovations ¹ were well designed and implemented in a prudent manner, which could guarantee some minimal control over the outcomes, while others seemed to disregard the real results the changes may have generated for education and its stakeholders.

The latter way of changes, design and implementation seems to ignore Merton’s (1936) warning against unanticipated and undesirable consequences that each social action can bring about to both the individuals and public policy. With no doubt, current policy-makers, who put anticipating the outcomes of purposive action at the core of their agenda, currently have the tools that could possibly help them to predict the results (De Zwart, 2015). This makes current public policies, which are believed to operate in the times of growing uncertainty (Brandsen et al., 2016), more stable and predictable in terms of future outcomes. Nevertheless, some recent studies (Zhao, 2017) claim that – at least in educational policy – outcomes of policy interventions appear unintended, but are, in fact, intended and covertly welcomed by policy-makers (and/or other stakeholders) who might benefit from them. In this case, therefore, one can speak of the (un)intended consequences, or the hidden agendas of reforms, which are not included in the reform programme, but are the result of how policy is translated into practise. Some scholars, e.g. Moss (2014) and Sahlberg (2016), claim that educational policies experience such (un)intended outcomes of reforms at various levels of administration, from local to supranational levels. Others add that this type of outcome affects different elements of educational policy, including teachers’ positions, curricula, possible ways in which educational tasks are implemented, and how education systems are governed (Wasmuth and Nitecki, 2017). As a result, (un)intended consequences of reforms either enhance or weaken education policy at a given educational stage.

Taking into account the above statements, this article aims to investigate the (un)intended consequences of educational reform that was designed and implemented in 2016 by the current government formed by the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – PiS) political party in Poland. The indicated reform has been selected due to its comprehensive regulatory frameworks in the field of education and its (un)intended outcomes in early childcare and education. In particular, (un)intended consequences of the indicated reform that manifested themselves in four elements of educational policy – organisational, curriculum, management and educators – are thoroughly analysed in this paper.

The paper is based on state-of-the-art data and the results of qualitative and quantitative research carried out by the author between 1 September 2018 and 30 June 2019. Regarding quantitative research, a survey was conducted among teachers (n = 165) working in primary schools and parents (n = 292) whose children attended these schools. In this case, primary schools (n = 88) run by both municipalities and non-governmental organisations were studied or analysed. The results presented in the study encompass the responses from surveyed teachers. Data was analysed with an SPSS Programme. Regarding qualitative research, individual in-depth interviews were conducted with head teachers in primary schools run by non-governmental organisations (n = 52) and municipalities’ representatives (n = 33) from educational units and local governments where these schools operate. Data from quantitative research was coded and then analysed with 2018 MAXQDA Programme. The schools in qualitative and quantitative research were located in four (out of 16) Polish voivodeships: Mazovieckie, Wielkopolskie, Malopolskie and Świętokrzyskie. They were selected due to the difference in the level of socio-economic development and different path of traditions in collaboration between municipalities and non-governmental organisations.

Rationale for early childhood education and care reforms after 1989

In Poland, the growing interest in ECEC is associated with membership of the European Union (from 1 May 2004). Belonging to transnational structures resulted in, as in other modern countries, the growing influence of international discourse on national education policy (Morgan and Volante, 2016). As a result, in Poland, at the strategic level, we are dealing with the implementation of EU development priorities, among which the universal availability and affordability of high-quality early education and childcare occupies one of the central places. ² At the operational level, on the other hand, Poland aims to obtain target financial support from the EU to improve ECEC services.

The current interest in early childhood education and care is a fundamental change in the way this field was treated in Poland over the years. Generally speaking, although universal childcare service was not at the forefront of the defamilising policy ³ during the communist era, the provision worsened considerably due to political decisions made in the first years of the systemic transformation (Heinen and Wator, 2006). The reform in 1991 that transferred responsibility for the infrastructure of childcare services to newly established municipalities resulted in an unprecedented deterioration of these services. Such a change, analysed alongside other changes in family policy, pushed Poland towards what Hantrais (2004) calls refamilisation, while Szelewa and Polakowski (2008), who analysed varieties of familialism in central and Eastern European countries on the basis of Leitner’s (2003) findings, classify as implicit familialism.

The consequences of neglect in the field of early childhood education are still visible today in the form of access to pre-schools and nurseries that are inadequate in terms of social needs, and the gap that separates Poland from other EU countries in the enrolment rate of children aged 0–5 in educational programmes. In Poland, the 2009 EU Council guidelines for the provision of childcare of children aged 4 until entry to primary education ⁴ have not yet been implemented, although the achievement of these guidelines is already close (91.9% in 2017 against the required 95%). The seemingly high rate is, however, an effect of the compulsory pre-school education of 6-year-old children, because the participation of 3- and 4-year-olds in educational programmes is still lower than in western European countries. The dramatic situation in Poland can be talked about in the context of the monumental goal of the Barcelona objectives striving to improve the enrolment rate of children under 3. ⁵ In Poland, in 2017, only 10.5% of children under 3 used such services, with 15.9% in the city, but only 2.8% in the countryside (MMFLSP, 2018). At the end of 2016, the unmet need for nursery care was estimated at over 37,900 places, where this data is provided only by municipalities (and not parents), and therefore may be highly understated (MFLSP, 2018)

The system of early childhood education and care in Poland

In Poland, early education and care relates to children under the age of compulsory primary education, which starts at the age of 7. ECEC is a two-tier system divided into two stages with the dividing line running along the age group to which the child belongs. Children aged 3–5 are legally entitled to pre-primary education, while 6-year-olds are obliged to participate in one-year-long pre-school programmes. There are several types of pre-school education institutions in the system. These are pre-schools and pre-primary sections. The latter can be located both in pre-schools and at primary schools. Pre-schools offer full-time care, i.e. lasting 10 or more hours, for children aged 3–6. Pre-primary sections, as a rule, implement a programme of compulsory annual pre-school preparation for 6-year-old children, although they can also accept children aged 3–5. The second option is very often used in rural areas where pre-schools are missing. Children aged 3–5 can also attend the so-called other forms of pre-school institutions, i.e. pre-primary points and pre-primary education groups, which can offer care in the same or shorter time than pre-schools. Provision for children under 3 is based on nurseries and – much less often – children’s clubs. The first type of institution offers care for children aged 20 weeks to 3 years, while the second is intended for those over 1 year. Both types of institutions provide services for 10 hours a day. ⁶

In terms of management, ECEC is a separate system, which means that separate ministries take care of it: the Ministry of National Education is responsible for education of children aged 3–6, while the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy is responsible for children under 3. In addition, in the case of the education of older children, educational superintendents, who are government representatives in the field of education, control the system in terms of the quality of services.

Regarding organisational and financial responsibility for provisions, it is municipalities who have been obliged to meet this requirement since 1991. Only recently have they been supported in these tasks by the central government.

ECEC in 1989–2015: From service collapse to the genesis of a universal system

When analysing the goals, scope and effects of innovations in ECEC in Poland, the whole systemic transformation period can be divided into three sub-periods. I call them: ‘rolling back the state’ (1990–2004); ‘proper reforms’ (2004–2015); and ‘a reverse trend towards implicit familialism’ (2015–2019). Importantly, the shift to particular sub-periods, while staying in conjunction with the overall socio-economic climate of the time, is also a result of values that a given political option represent.

Rolling back the state (1990–2004)

The first sub-period began with the socio-economic and political transition towards a democratic system and lasted until Poland’s accession to the EU. I refer to it as ‘rolling back the state’ to indicate the massive withdrawal of the state’s responsibilities from the active design and delivery of ECEC services, which was not followed by non-state actors stepping into the system. That time, in particular during the first years, can be characterised by political instability when political power was wavering between post-Solidarity (1989–1993 and 1997–2001) and the left-wing (1993–1997 and 2001–2005) parties. They, regardless of their political roots, showed no positive interest in ECEC. The general assumption was basically to ascribe changes in ECEC to the logic of overall country reforms, but policy-makers manifested no clear vision about particular solutions in the field. As a result, ECEC was democratised (transferred to municipalities but left with no governmental support) and at the same time commercialised by municipalities, who struggled with financial constraints. Such changes were introduced to primary education as well, but ECEC decentralisation was implemented at an express pace (1989–1992), while commercialisation was introduced in a harsh manner. ⁷ These changes are primarily assumed to take responsibility for dismantling of the public network of childcare facilities and worsening the affordability and accessibility to ECEC in Poland for the following years (Levitas and Herczyński, 2002; Sadura, 2016; Zahorska, 2002). It is important to note that during that time, private providers did not fill the gap left in ECEC by the state. Although the Act on Education from 1991 de jure broke the monopoly of the state in education and allowed private providers to establish their educational facilities, private provision in early education was almost blank. Non-existence of private providers is usually explained by poor demand, being a result of both institutional (growing unemployment, in particular among women) and cultural (negative perception of caring for children outside the family) factors (Saraceno, 2011).

Regarding ECEC in a conceptual way, no direct improvements were designed in the first sub-period. Even the so-called Handke’s reform in 1999, ⁸ which was assumed to be the most multifaceted educational change in the post-war history of Polish education (Sadura, 2017), and whose goal was to improve educational opportunities, did not devote much attention to early childhood education and care. The focus of Handke’s reform was on the introduction to lower secondary schools (called gymnasia) to the system, although research results indicated the progressive failure of the Polish school in equalising educational opportunities. Contrary to experts’ opinions, policy-makers did not consider that improving educational opportunities should have been started, at least at pre-schools. The unfavourable status quo was therefore maintained in early education. Handke’s reform did not even lower the school age and did not introduce compulsory pre-school education for 6-year-old children (this change was only made by the left-wing formation in 2002).

Proper reforms (2004–2015)

The second sub-period (2004–2015) coincided with the end of power of the left-wing party coalition (2001–2005), followed by the government led by PiS (2005–2007), which was further replaced by the coalition of the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska – PO) and the Polish People’s Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe – PSL) (2007–2011 and 2011–2015). In this sub-period, reforms in early childhood education and care had a consistent character aimed at improving enrolment rates in order to strive for objectives set by the EU for member states. Therefore, policy innovations directly related to ECEC while, contrary to the rolling back the state sub-period, they did not basically follow systemic changes in Poland. Educational changes of the second sub-period can be divided into infrastructural and systemic ones. The first type focused on improving accessibility to childcare facilities, while the second interfered with the shape of the entire childcare service system, including in particular entry and exit options (both for service providers and citizens), management and financing issues.

Infrastructural reforms encompassed the introduction of new types of childcare facilities for children aged 3–5 (2007) as a result of the decision made by PiS, and next for children under 3 as a result of a decision made by the PO-PSL coalition (2011). The latter change was combined with a favourable change in the administrative subordination of nurseries. ⁹ The introduction of new types of early education facilities related to simplified legal forms, subject to less restrictive construction, sanitary and fire safety regulations than to traditional nurseries and pre-schools. As a result, early education de facto opened the door for private providers. This has made the Polish case more similar to the situation in education, which has been taking place in more developed countries for at least three decades, and is called by Ball and Junemann (2012) as ‘two rollings’, i.e. rolling back the state (withdrawal the state from active delivery of educational services) and rolling out (private providers stepping into the system).

Systemic changes, on the other hand, were implemented by the PO-PSL coalition under the name of two particular political innovations. The first (in 2009) lowered the school age to 6 years and obliged 5-year-olds to participate in pre-school programmes. The second change, which was introduced within the framework of the so-called ‘pre-school law’ (2013), entitled 4-year-olds (since 2015) and 3-year-olds (since 2017) to pre-school education. It is important that due to the extension of pre-school tasks, the central government assigned target subsidies for pre-school education for municipalities. Thus, the paradigm of full financial and organisational responsibility of municipalities for pre-school education was broken. Even if a new financial mechanism was at that time (and still is) facing a great deal of criticism from municipalities, ¹⁰ a shared model of financial responsibility between the government and municipalities became a fact. In addition, by introducing the pre-school law, municipalities were allowed to organise an open bid competition for private providers if they were not able to secure pre-school places for all eligible children by themselves. This, (at least in theoretically) pushed Polish early education towards networked governance (Hartley, 2005) or new public governance (Osborne, 2006), which assumes greater involvement of both public, market and non-profit organisations in order to design and delivery of public services.

Considering the above changes, one can regard the reforms from 2009 to 2013 as the most comprehensive, direct and consistent interventions in pre-school education that ever took place in the transition period. Other interventions, in the sub-period of proper reforms, were implemented as well; however, they neither had direct influence on ECEC, nor changed the overall system of ECEC delivery. Thus, in relation to public service innovation literature, I classify them as incremental changes that do not transform the system, but in fact can improve it through ongoing changes. Among such changes, I indicate inter alia the introduction to the Act of Education a mechanism, allowing municipalities to transfer small schools and pre-schools (the ones attended by no more than 70 pupils) to private providers. Such a change can enhance private providers and save some small pre-schools and schools (especially located in rural areas) from closing down, but also it experienced heavy criticism by teachers. ¹¹

ECEC in 2015–2019: A reverse trend towards implicit familialism

The third sub-period, which I call ‘a reverse trend towards implicit familialism’ began with a political shift in which PiS took over. Almost immediately, educational reform, which had functioned as one of the flagships during the parliamentary campaign, was introduced and very shortly implemented. In this section, I follow this reform and its (un)intended consequences for early education, in regard to four elements of educational policy: organisational changes; curriculum; managemen; and teachers and social embeddedness.

Organisational changes

In organisational terms, the PiS educational reform was a return to what had been in force before 1999 in the field of primary and secondary education, and before 2009 in early childhood education. Therefore, lower secondary schools ¹² were removed from the education system, while the time of education in primary schools was extended by two years (to eight classes), and in secondary schools by a year (up to four classes). Changes within the early education system encompassed increasing the age of entering compulsory education to 7 and cancelling the pre-school enrolment obligation for 5-year-olds. The government justified the above changes with two reasons. Firstly, the need to meet the expectations of parents of 6-year-olds, who, during under the previous government (PO-PSL coalition) failed to stop the reform lowering the school starting age. Secondly, to tackle inequalities occurred in secondary schools (Justification, 2016). In fact, however, unfavourable changes in ECEC – as shown below – raised inequalities among children below compulsory school age, which itself can be regarded as an (un)intended consequence.

Organisational changes in the PiS reform, in the case of both design and implementation, ignore Sarason (1990), who recommends treating education as a joint receptacles system in which altering one element does not leave others unchanged. Nevertheless, the reform generated fallacy according to which changing the school regime would neither impact accessibility nor quality of ECEC. The scenario turned out to be just the opposite, mostly due to the coincidence of implementing legal entitlement to early education for children aged 3–5, and at the same time retreating 6-year-olds from primary schools back to pre-schools. The General Control Chamber (GCC) (2019) indicated that the reality of the right to pre-school education for 3- and 4-year-olds was fictitious in many municipalities in Poland. Only a half of them had sufficient pre-school provision to ensure places for over 80% of children aged 3–6, yet as few as 35% provided access to pre-school education to about 80% of children aged 3 or 4.

In fact, limited public provision in terms of infrastructure and staffing, hand in hand with highly insufficient government support in the matter, significantly affected the reality of the right to pre-school education. In many municipalities, and especially in large cities, public pre-schools are overcrowded, and it is a common practice to drive children to faraway districts where places in public pre-schools can be found. The GCC report (2019) confirmed that approximately 30% of children whose parents applied for a place in a public pre-school in the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 school years did not get into the establishments of their first choice, and the situation was the most difficult for 3- and 4-year-olds.

Difficult standing can justify another (un)intended consequence of the PiS reform, i.e. an increase in parents’ decisions to move their children to private providers’ establishments. The statistics reflect the shift towards the non-public supply in pre-school education: the number of private establishments is growing, as is the number of children attending them. In 2018, 27% of children stayed in pre-schools run by private providers, compared to 22.8% pre-reform (2014). Of course, alternating between public and private educational service providers is not only happening in Poland, and the phenomenon itself is well described in the literature. The Polish specifics are, however, that the growing interest in private pre-schools’ offer is by and large related to the PiS reform. Firstly, it is a head-on collision between the worsening accessibility of childcare, which could enhance familialism again, and current society expectations to keep the course towards building a universal ECEC system, which seems to be a requirement in the present-day labour market and for children’s well-being. Secondly, the fact is that the current government favours passive recipients instead of aware and engaged citizens. Polish educational system is a mixture of traditional public administration, with command and control chain as primary, and (limited) new public management with its voice and choice options. Both regimes, however, promote passive behaviour in society, when they do not consider citizens as actors who can hand-in-hand design and deliver educational services. ¹³ In this case, thousands of parents use the exit option and are ‘voting with their feet’ to recoup their citizenship rights to express their opinions about educational services, and to exercise their willingness to be actively involved in the design and delivery of public services that would be more personalised and tailored for their needs.

Changes in education implemented at different education stages are linked with a specific (mis)understanding of the reform’s objectives among policy-makers. According to the Justification (2016), the reform is aimed at tackling educational inequalities and counteracting school selection and segregation. One can argue, of course, whether and to what extent lower secondary schools fulfilled these functions and to what extent the return to the school system operating before 1999 would make the Polish educational system more egalitarian. The debatable issue is also the reliability of the data used by PiS to justify the innovations. ¹⁴ In fact, the withdrawal of ECEC reform from 2009, which aimed to promote pre-school education, is an indisputable mistake in the context of improving educational opportunities and tackling educational inequalities among the younger generation. From a long-term perspective, it was particularly adverse to lift the pre-school obligation for 5-year-old children who still do not commonly attend education programmes in rural areas. It has not taken long for the (un)intended consequences of the PiS reform to appear: in 2014–2019, the share of 5-year-olds in early education in rural areas slightly decreased, which made the difference between the city and the village in the enrolment rates of 5-year-olds in early education much more significant. ¹⁵ Lifting the pre-school obligation for 5-year-old children and returning 6-year-olds back to pre-schools is especially surprising, in comparison with the results of the studies, which stress the value of early education in improving educational opportunities, and at the same time report both children and school readiness to start educational programmes, e.g. (Giza, 2010; Murawska, 2004; Raudenbush and Eschmann, 2015).

It is also debatable to what extent the PiS reform, called the Zalewska reform from the name of the Minister of National Education introducing it, has managed to protect against liquidation for demographic/economic reasons, the so-called small rural schools, ¹⁶ and to what extent the effects of the reform affect pre-schools located within the structure of these schools. The author’s study demonstrates that the increase in the number of students in 7th and 8th grades, who remain in primary schools after cancelling lower secondary schools, is small. The headmasters of the surveyed rural schools and representatives of municipalities pointed out, however, an increase in costs of operating schools in an 8-class formula, which resulted from the need to retrofit and renovate them, establish subject laboratories and employ specialist teachers. The infrastructure became a problem as well. When changing the school regime, PiS did not take into account the fact that the 8-year primary school from 20 years ago looked completely different from today’s. At that time, there were no pre-schools or other forms of pre-school education in schools in rural areas and small cities, which is now common practice. Currently, as a result of the consequences of the PiS reform, in some primary schools located in rural areas and small cities that participated in the author’s research, pre-school education was limited in terms of the number of children attending early education programmes and the quality of programmes delivered. Of those teachers surveyed, 5% declared such a change in their schools, while 2.5% of them indicated such a change as having the most oppressive character among all changes introduced by the PiS reform.

Moreover, the author’s research revealed that in most surveyed municipalities, pre-school education would probably function better (in terms of accessibility, infrastructure, offer and service quality) if there was no educational reform. This is particularly true in the case of children under 3, who suffer the most from what has been taking place in higher educational stages. Warsaw is a good example, where the promise of President Rafał Trzaskowski from the 2018 election campaign about free of charge nurseries has only partly succeeded. For now, Warsaw, together with the other ten largest Polish cities associated in the Union of Polish Metropolises, issued a notice to pay or perform for the educational reform to the central government in May 2019 (Zubik, 2019).

Curriculum

PiS innovation in the school system was connected with changes in the core curriculum, which resulted in other (un)intended consequences. Klus-Stańska (2017), who analysed the new core curriculum with regard to early education, indicated that the document was based on outdated and colloquial knowledge, and it was characterised by significant reductionism in the field of cognitive content, independence in cognitive activity and expression; instead, it exaggerated a programme-centred approach and introduced unexpected infantilisation of the children’s possibilities. Klus-Stańska (2017) indicated that in the new curriculum, a child was assumed to be, above all, well-behaved, but not necessarily socially independent; s/he had to imitate, but not create, follow but not explore. On the other hand, the pre-school as an institution remained firmly anchored in the current terminology, which emphasised care, not education. Significant reductions in the content with regard to maths, language skills and science reflected such an approach in the core curriculum (Klus-Stańska, 2017). Kaźmierczyk (2017) contends that some of the goals set for a child in the core curriculum dealt with starting, rather than the finishing stage of pre-school education. Moreover, it is also important that the core curriculum education, from an early stage, should shape children’s awareness of patriotic values. Experts, however, stress that next to the role of ‘human’ and ‘Pole’, there was no room for ‘citizen’ (Kaźmierczyk, 2017).

It is important to note that what has happened to the core curriculum with its focus on passive attitudes, instead of the ability to cooperate and be independent in making decisions, might reflect a hidden governmental goal to shape future generations as the government wishes, an (un)intended consequence. In the vision of PiS, early education, just like education in general, is to create a state in which tendencies of centralist, statist and rigid top-down management are present, combined with a lack of trust in mechanisms promoting real participation of citizens in the process of designing and implementing public policies. Citizens are to become recipients of innovations proposed by the central government. Their influence is limited to (façade) consultations, protests and voting with their feet, but it is far from co-creation and co-production (Parks et al., 1981; Pestoff and Brandsen, 2006; Pestoff et al., 2012), which are briefly understood as active citizen’s involvement in the design and delivery of public services. In order to achieve this goal, citizens need to be moulded gradually in a long-term process, starting from early childhood education.

Management

Basically from the beginning of its term of office, PiS has changed the educational law in order to enhance the direct control of the government over the education system. As justified by the need to reverse an unfavourable trend of rising decisions made by municipalities to close down the small schools due to their decreasing demography and economic reasons, PiS, in fact, strengthened the role of school superintendents. They, in 2015, gained influence over local governments’ decisions regarding the shape of the school network. In accordance with the PiS changes, the local government must obtain a positive opinion of a school superintendent in the case of both liquidating and transforming an educational institution. To understand the hidden sense of strengthening the role of school superintendents, this change should be considered with the restriction on the transfer of small schools and pre-schools by local government to private providers. According to the PiS amendment, the local government cannot delegate to private providers the ability to run the only school or pre-school of a given type. Of course, according to municipalities, changes introduced by PiS limit their independence in shaping the local school network. These changes meet a particular lack of understanding from the part of municipalities in terms of early education, for which the financial and organisational responsibility is still borne by the municipalities with only limited support from the central government.

The situation looks different in various local governments, but the author’s study demonstrates that the mechanism for transferring pre-schools is not, contrary to popular belief, used on a massive scale. Moreover, the commonly indicated economic factor as the only, or at least the main, criterion for transferring a pre-school or school, is used exaggeratedly. Local governments’ representatives are aware of the fact that savings from the transfer of an educational institution are either limited (in the case of primary schools) or practically insignificant (in the case of pre-schools, for which the local government must pay a donation from its own resources even after the transfer). Moreover, representatives of local governments are usually more willing to transfer a school or pre-school to a non-governmental organisation than to a market provider, even taking into account that the economic potential of the former is limited, and therefore it may potentially require further support from the local government.

Teachers and social embeddedness of the reform

By introducing educational reform, PiS broke the iron rules of reforming education systems, which claimed that in order for it to succeed, an educational innovation should have obtained the widest possible public support (Datnow et al., 2006; Fullan, 2016; Levin and Fullan, 2008).

Referring to early education, it is difficult to argue with PiS’s argument about meeting the expectations of parents of 6-year-olds, who opposed the reform lowering school age imposed by PO-PSL coalition. In fact, while pushing for its reform, PO-PSL ignored the concerns of a large part of the population, (CBOS, 2009), but also the critical opinion of a group of parents gathered around the opinion-forming urban social movement ‘Save the Toddlers’. ¹⁷ Its purpose was to block the reform, and its high activity in public space enabled the channelling of the discussion around poor infrastructural and staffing preparation of primary schools and lack of emotional maturity of 6-year-olds to lowering the school age. Few empirical studies (e.g. Fijałkowska, 2012; GCC, 2013, 2014; Kaczan and Rycielski, 2012), showing that the situation was just opposite, did not manage to break the overall negative perception of PO-PSL reform. In the end, the reform was not blocked, yet the pressure of parents on the then-government softened the reform and stretched its implementation in time. ¹⁸ As a result, taking into consideration phases of the educational reform introduction proposed by Fullan (2016), the reform lowering the school age was still in the early implementation phase, and thus suffered from the lack of social grounding when PiS took over political power. This enabled PiS to reverse the change and implement its own innovation in a way that presumably could protect the reform against the potential resistance, i.e. in a hasty, careless and authoritative manner. In July 2017, the Polish parliament rejected a citizen’s petition for a nationwide educational referendum, signed by over 900,000 citizens with the votes of PiS deputies. Public consultations for the reform were conducted in a superficial way, without actual influence of citizens on the final shape of the planned educational change, and even contrary to the critical opinion of the groups who used to occupy extremely different positions in some education issues in the past but were consolidated by the PiS reform. ¹⁹

It is also important that in the design of the discussed reform – contrary to the basic principles of reforming educational systems (Sahlberg, 2016) – the voice of teachers was disregarded, although they were the ones who had to implement the changes in practice, and their commitment, understanding the goals of the reform and a positive attitude could have determined the success or failure of each educational change. The (un)planned consequences of educational change in the form of changes in pedagogical councils as a result of dividing/merging primary schools and closing down lower secondary schools, stress related to the threat of losing employment, low salaries, and finally struggling with the consequences of reform in schools due to the dissatisfaction of parents and students, weakened teachers’ morale. The situation of teachers was additionally aggravated by changes in their professional position, i.e. extending the period of implementation of the professional promotion path from 10 to 15 years, and thus reaching higher salaries later. In the author’s study, the great majority of surveyed teachers (82.9%) regarded such a change as unfavourable, declaring that the previous regulation was more likely to benefit them; while only 4.4% of teachers agreed that extending their professional path was a good change.

Teachers also commonly discuss another (un)intended consequence of the PiS reform, i.e. the decreasing autonomy of schools and pre-schools. Superintendents gained the right to give opinions on organisational sheets of schools and pre-schools, and became a member of competition committees for the position of headmaster in public schools and pre-schools. Thus, the government, with the use of superintendents, has in fact strengthened its control on both the schools and head teachers.

The explosion of teachers’ dissatisfaction reflected itself in the largest teachers’ strike ever, which lasted almost the entire month of April in 2019. According to data from the Polish Teachers’ Union (ZNP), approximately 75% of public schools and pre-schools took part in the strike, although official government data spoke of only 45% (Sitnicka, 2019). Despite the severity of the strike for the parents (lessons in schools did not take place, as in many pre-schools in the first days of the strike), the scale of social solidarity with teachers at the initial stage of the strike was significant. ²⁰ As time passed, however, social solidarity was melting. This trend was undoubtedly felt by the government, which succeeded in reducing the discussion around the problems of education to the teachers’ excessive salary expectations and in making changes which marginalised the role of teachers at the stage of final examinations at schools. ²¹ Negotiations between the central government and the teaching community revealed the politicisation and lack of unity among the educational trade unions. The agreement that the central government signed with the educational Solidarity trade union, against the will of the other two teachers’ unions (ZNP and OFZZ), is in fact a façade, considering that Solidarity is a union that strongly supports current political option. It is difficult to talk about any concessions to teachers from the central government. Firstly, the career path shortening is a return to the pre-2017 status, not a new regulation improving the teachers’ status. Secondly, salary increases for teachers are assumed to spread over time and wage regulations discriminate against pre-school teachers, as this is a group not entitled to a tutoring allowance. The so-called Round Table of Education, organised by the central government in cooperation with the President of the Republic of Poland and intended to be a formula for consultations between the government and the citizens on the educational crisis, was in fact the facade of a democratic mechanism that crowded out teachers’ unions.

Conclusions: Has the centralistic-conservative model weakened ECEC?

The above description of the worrying effects of the 2016 educational reform on ECEC raises the question of the (un)intended consequences of this change. In this field, a very clear lack of consistency between the objectives declared by the central government and the objectives actually achieved has become apparent.

In combination with the challenges that the 2016 educational reform generated for early childhood education, it seems justified to put forward the thesis that in an (un)conscious and (un)controlled, although extremely consistent way, the government aims to weaken the significance of this field. The government’s attitude to early childhood education is, at the very least, ambivalent. On the one hand, due to Poland’s commitments to improving access to early childhood education, resulting from its membership in European structures, it is no longer possible to lack political interest in this field. Similarly, it was not impossible to reverse the reform of the PO-PSL government, which introduced legal entitlement for pre-school education for 3- and 4-year-olds in order to strive for the enrolment rate set by the EU for the member states. Such a change, since the beginning, should be treated as the introduction of acquired rights regarding the younger generation. For these reasons, in Poland, as in other European countries, we can now discuss whether to support educational services for children below compulsory school age from the perspectives of the challenges in the labour market and the need to enhance parents’ employment rates, or to invest in these services irrespective of parental employment status, and thus, see them as the tools enhancing children’s well-being. In other words, we can just balance between what Moss (2006) calls ‘childcare’ and ‘pedagogical’ discourse, but not allowing neglect of ECEC by policy-makers.

On the other hand, however, early education seems to be an experimental field in which not only the effects of reforms but also the values, beliefs and visions of the particular government lie behind the reforms. Taking this into account, it can be seen that the educational reform of PiS seems to have a clear conservative outline. ²² According to this approach, education under compulsory school age is more childcare than education, which I showed in regard to the core curriculum. However, the conservative outline has been exercised beyond the curriculum and now refers to the wider discourse about family/parental rights to decide about the upbringing of children. Therefore, in the PiS vision of early education, it is the parents who decide whether and when to send a child to a pre-school (which justifies the withdrawal of the pre-school obligation for 5-year-olds); the child remains in the family and pre-school environment a year longer, which in principle should be more friendly to him/her than the oppressive school (which justifies lowering school age); and, finally, children from rural communities go to pre-schools and schools in their place of residence instead of being delivered to the large ones, where they remain anonymous and exposed to the difficulties of everyday journeys (which justifies strengthening the control functions of the school superintendents and tightening the regulations governing the transfer of small schools to private providers).

Now let us go one step further, comparing the educational reform of 2016 with the (un)intended consequences of the second flagship programme of PiS, i.e. the Family 500+ Programme, ²³ which grants PLN 500 per month (equivalent to approximately US$130) for every child without any income criterion. ²⁴ Despite the positive effect of reducing extreme poverty among families bringing up children, ²⁵ this programme has generated some (un)intended consequences which may strengthen the conservative vision of society and the traditional family model. Some authors (Magda et al., 2018) contend the negative impact of the 500+ benefit on the labour market activity of women bringing up children. Szarfenberg (2019) indicates that the family model promoted by the 500+ Programme is the one in which mainly the woman takes care of children. If one takes into account other social reforms of PiS, such as lowering the retirement age for women (2015) and introducing a minimum pension for women who have raised at least four children (2019), one can see that PiS consistently values the development of family childcare. In such a configuration, the conservative vision of society promoted by PiS is pronounced even more strongly.

Promoting a centralist vision of the state through the educational reform is also evidenced by the desire to strengthen the position of the central government in relation to schools and pre-schools and local governments. The tool to achieve this objective was the strengthening of the control function of the school superintendent both at the level of self-government (influencing the school network shape) and at the level of schools and pre-schools (giving opinions on organisational sheets, participating in competition commissions for the headmaster position). On the other hand, the staffing policy employed by the Minister of National Education coming from PiS, who changed all school superintendents for those in favour with the government right after the parliamentary elections, confirms that the control function of school superintendents goes beyond a simple correction of what was believed to be excessively loosened mechanisms under the PO-PSL government.

The centralist-conservative outline of the educational reform, with its hidden agenda to weaken ECEC, has also materialised in the weakening of teachers’ professional position. Teachers were treated by the government not so much as one of the centres of resistance to the reform, but rather to the vision of the Law and Justice society in general. The changes in education law have made the situation of this professional group worse. The attacks on trade unions and the lack of willingness to communicate during teacher strikes limit the autonomy of this profession. On the other hand, low salaries and, in the case of pre-school education teachers, wage discrimination make the teaching profession unattractive. The analysis of job offers for teachers provided by education superintendents’ offices clearly shows that teachers of pre-school education are currently the most sought-after group among all teachers in most Polish voivodships. ²⁶

Of course, the clear-cut statement that the PiS government is blindly pursuing its aim to weaken ECEC seems to be pretty subversive. However, taking into account the multidimensional size and scope of outcomes that PiS educational reform revealed in early education, it could be asked how (un)intended they were. Generally speaking, as I have tried to show in the article, the conservative outline of the reform keeps the child close to the family and local community in both theoretical and practical senses. Hence, (un)intended wishes of the government that favours family over institutional provision could have come true. In this case, childcare services, if unavoidable, should reflect home-like conditions, while they can be viewed as the lesser of two evils for those who have to participate in the labour market while their children are below compulsory school age (Moss, 2016). According to the (un)intended outcomes of the PiS reform, early childhood education is a substitute for, but not a complement to, the home.