Polish publicly-funded pre-schools have put up their prices

So, the cost for a typical 4 year-old is about PLN 400. [Private pre-schools (often poor quality) charge PLN 1000.]

What's worse is that to hide this large rise (last year you could count on about PLN 200), the government announced that parents have the right to 5 free hours a day at pre-school. Think about it for a moment - those 5 free hours are perfect if you need to go out and have your hair done and perhaps have a little coffee with a girlfriend. In reality, teachers are faced with a nightmare of bureaucracy as each kid has to be timed in and out - each hour is charged you see - and parents have to declare their requested hours of 'childcare' for the month ahead.

Aghhh!!

I could get really angry with the cretins who thought this one up ...

Nobody agrees with anything this government (or previous governments) is doing with education.

Under Communism, you paid for pre-school depending on your level of income. It was a much fairer system. Now you need to be well-off to be able to afford it and have connections to get into a publicly-funded pre-school.

Do you realize that in Poland,your taxes are peanuts compared with other European countries', so what do you expect ?

The Polish State has no money.

Everything is becoming private like in the UK and what is still state owned is struggling: Hospital, Education etc
If Poles were taxed like in Denmark or in France everything would be partially subzidized by the State but their disposable income would be very little .

Where on earth did you get this idea from? Taxes (as a proportion of income) are higher in Poland than in many other EU countries!


yes, and if you pay for everything as a proportion of your income, then there is no point in earning more, is there? That is (one of the many) definitions of communism..

About 50% of the money which my employer pays me goes to the state as taxes and ZUS. And then when I spend the money I'm allowed to keep, I'm expected to pay 23% of it in sales tax (and even higher taxes on booze, fags and petrol)!

Where? Certainly not in many places. In fact, in many places outside of the major cities, 400PLN will get you a private nursery. In fact, I'm familiar with one public nursery - and the highest cost paid is 180zl a month, plus food (which is about 6zl a day for everything).


No they don't. Have you actually been in a nursery, or are you basing this all on some hysterical news report?

Incidentally, what's wrong with declaring up front? Nurseries are often owned by private owners, who need to be able to issue invoices for payment - and no nursery in Poland is going to take a kid on post-payment terms due to the general Polish mentality.


I fail to see how 400PLN (truth is, it's usually quite a bit lower) a month is "unaffordable" to someone who works full time in Poland.


Some do. Plenty of others don't charge so much. In fact, 1000zl usually is only found in decent nurseries in nice locations in big cities. Again - the vast majority aren't paying anything near this.

I thought it was only introduced in Krakow by our local council, but I see now it is everywhere.


Exactly. If both parents work and prefer to have their child taken care of by professional carers, 400 zlotys which includes care and 3 meals a day is as cheap as dirt.

Come on, Varsovian, communism finished 20 years ago. It collapsed because too many things were for free. Isn`t it obvious?

it collapsed because there were very little incentives to work, be productive, develope, invent etc