Children aged up to 3 years

The care system for children aged up to 3 years does not provide for childcare settings other than crèches, kids’ clubs, daycare providers / childminders and nannies.

All other settings or activities are of an informal nature and are based on an agreement (often informal or oral) between parents and an individual providing childcare.

Children aged 3–6 years

On 7 September 2007, the Polish Parliament amended the School Education Act (ustawa o systemie oświaty), allowing the provision of preschool education for children aged 3–5 years in settings other than nursery schools and preschool classes in primary schools. The policymakers aimed to encourage the creation of alternative settings by communes in areas with specific demographic and geographical conditions to supplement the existing network of nursery schools.

Like nursery schools, alternative settings can be public or non-public. Establishing and administering public preschool education settings are statutory tasks of the commune. However, alternative public preschool education settings can also be created by legal and natural persons, based on a permit from the commune concerned. In this case, they receive a subsidy from the commune amounting to at least 50 % of current expenditure per child as incurred by a public nursery school administered by the same commune. (The legislation refers to the ‘basic subsidy amount’, describing the method for its calculation in detail.)

In order to provide preschool education in an alternative, non-public setting, legal and natural persons should be entered into the Register of Non-Public Schools and Other Educational Institutions, which is kept by the commune. A subsidy for a non-public setting amounts to at least 40 % of current expenditure per child as incurred by a public nursery school in a given commune.

As in nursery schools, alternative settings follow the national core curriculum for preschool education, and classes are conducted by teachers who hold qualifications required to work in a nursery school. Pedagogical supervision of alternative preschool settings is exercised, as is the case for nursery schools, by the head of the regional education authorities (kurator oświaty) (in accordance with the Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 28 August 2017, amended on 20 December 2017 (Rozporządzenie Ministra Edukacji Narodowej z dnia 28 sierpnia 2017 r.).

There are also many examples of alternative curricular and/or methodological approaches. Preschool teachers often draw on the approaches of Montessori and Waldorf preschool institutions and other similar institutions. Teachers often use such alternative methods on a selective basis and create their own approaches adapted to the needs of their environment. The Wrocław School of the Future (Wrocławska Szkoła Przyszłości) is an example of an original curricular and methodological approach to preschool education that extends beyond the traditional cognitive paradigm; following this approaches work with children is largely situated within ‘the paradigm of imagination’.