Abstract:

On June 6th, 2014 Poland celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the freedom from the communist regime. During that time near every area of the state activities was changed and the Polish education system too. To make the reasonable reforms in education at least the following questions had to be answered:
• What is the form of the model pupil and abiturient?
• What is the main goal of education?
• How to educate the 6-7 years old children without killing the innate interest of their knowledge?
• How to develop the soft skills of pupils, like the creativity, the engagement and the ability of working in small groups.
The reform of the education system started on September 1th, 1999 and has changed the two levels of education system (8 years of the primary school plus 4 years of the secondary school (called lyceum) ended with the secondary school-leaving examinations (called the matura exam) with two written exams in Polish language and mathematics, and four oral exams in Polish language, mathematics, history and one subject of the free choice, into the three levels education system: 6 years of the primary school, 3 years of gymnasium and 3 years of lyceum. One of the main postulates of that reform was to disseminate the post-gymnasium education. This was obtained by lowering the lever of matura exams. The lowering lever of the matura exams has consisted of the elimination of the compulsory exams in mathematics for 20 years. This drastically lowered the possibility to study the engineering sciences by young people.
The next big error of that educational reform was the marginalization of the vocational secondary education. There was an increasing number of the young people being unemployed after passing the matura exam.
The changes introduced through Poland's educational reforms in 1999 boosted the performance of the country’ 15 years old pupils on the standardized PISA test. The restructuring of the basic cycle of education and postponement of pupils joining the vocational stream by 1 year played a central role in the pupils’ test scores improvement. Another significant factor contributing to improved performance was the increased number of hours spent on language instructions for all pupils. Poland now ranks 6th among all EU countries in overall scores on PISA, the only transition country to go from being below the OECD average on PISA to above average.
Nowadays the mathematics matura examinations are introduced again and on two levels: fundamental and extended. The success in mathematics examinations in 2014 has fallen down by 10% as compared with the previous year. The explanation of this apprehension fact seems to be easy. According to the regulations of the Ministry of Education, teachers try to prepare their pupils to pass the exams which are made in the form of tests. They do not allow pupils to solve problems which need some imagination and creativity, they kill thinking. And when something not typical occurs the pupils are helpless.

In our work we present a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned phenomena and include the results of a survey.

Keywords:

Polish education system, main goals of education