Is there an elementary school with English as a main language in Poland?

Hello- We are planning on moving to Poznan or Wroclaw. We have an 8 years old boy. He does not speak much Polish yet, not enough to be at school I think. Is there an alternative?

If you want your boy to actually learn Polish, send him to a good public school. A polish school... in about 4-6 months he will be fluent. I know that as in my childhood I had a finnish friend whose parents did just as that. He attended primary school from grade 1 to 7 and ever since has been fluent.

My concern is that he does not speak any Polish and he won't understand classes. He will get lost. Do Polish public schools offer special classes for kids like him.

No. Your child, in the public schooling system, will be left to either sink or swim. There's no money to provide special classes for such children - it's your obligation to get him 'up to standard'. The schools won't help - after all, how can they, when there's 30 other kids to deal with? In fact, it gets worse - right now, the attitude in Poland is that if a child doesn't speak Polish, there's something wrong with him - and they may attempt to place him in a special school for 'disabled' children. The Roma have got terrible problems with this at the minute - and it may happen to your child, too.

He probably won't fail (generally speaking, teachers will just give a pass grade and ignore him) - but it's hardly satisfactory education.

If you can't afford to put him into private schooling, then you should have done a better job of teaching him Polish.

Delphi, you are such a sad pessimistic case. Kids just learn languages on their own, quickly and efficiently when fully immersed. None of them ever sink.

There's a very good private school in Wroclaw that teaches children either bilingually (English/Polish) or exclusively in English. It's expensive
but it ensures that your kid won't be left behind in a class exclusively for Polish kids. Just go to Google and type in- bilingual school wroclaw- and it should come up.

Actually, delphiandomine seems to have a very realistic approach. I spoke last night with my sister who is Polish as I am considering going back with my 11 year old and looking at different options. She said the exact thing word by word! Kids being pushed from grade to grade, not much support provided (there is a new (2010) ruling by the Ministry of Education to provide additional Polish lessons to those that don't speak the language but there are no extra funds for such), and me being best off by signing my kid into some private language institute with intense sessions. YES there are kids that sink (just read an article about a Swidish kid who is struggling and just cut her peers' face with a razor) this is not just about the language or scholasticity but very deep psychological obstacles a child has to deal with that are not obvious for the parents. Anyway, there are international schools in Poland so just google them. Warsaw has a whole bunch but most cities have some option.

hameryka
How can I find out about this ruling? I'm coming from USA and the private schools that speak english are rather expensive. I have a 6 year old. I was wondering if I could put her in public school and she could learn polish or if I have to enroll her in one of those private schools. She's only learning to read english now. I'm not sure which private school would be less expensive and what options I have. Thanks for any information you can give me.

I want to study in Poland and i have four kids who speaks Arabic only , is there any English schools for them ?

There is so much wrong with this.

You have four kids and want to _study_? In a country whose language you are ignorant of?

You have kids who speak a language and you want to put them into a school to be educated in a language which

a) they dont' speak,
b) you're not especially fluent in,
c) is not the language of the country you're going to "study" in....

Is there any way your plans could be less realistic? Answer is..... la.

If there are (and there most probably are by this late date!), let's hope that the teachers are at least NATIVE English speakers, either from the UK, the States, Canada, or even Australia! It's not merely enough that they are "teacher certified" from some European university of unknown quantity, they ideally ought to be first-language speakers of the language which they are teaching:-)

No, I'm not some cabbage-patch kid either and I realize that grade school teachers' salaries are often a bleedin' jokeLOL Nonetheless, the joke will continue to be on those Polish pupils, who might never truly learn to speak English correctly, only learning to dutifully mimic the usually questionable pronunciation of their native Polish teachers.

While it's not their teacher's fault per se, ingrained errors, year after year, generation after generation, are nearly as impossible to get rid of as a bad computer virus!! Poor language quality in the long run affects EVERYONE, including those who don't even realize they've become contaminated.

How can teaching, for that matter any profession, exist without rock-solid standards?. Here is where the Polish government will play a vital role.

you need to move on from your provincial attitudes, L...
If English is to be an international language, then why should it not be taught by a Polish/German/French person....?

...because then it becomes "GLOBLISH" aka "GOBBLEDYGOOKENGLISH" no longer English, nor German, nor Polish, nor French, but some mutant mishmash, unrecognzable as either language:-)

To make a long story short, if the instructor in question is a bonafide, one-hundred percent native bilingual in both the language they are teaching (in this case English) ALONG with, as opposed to in place of, their mother tongue, I'd have no qualms whatsoever regarding their qualifications, as already stated once prior.

However, my dismaying experience up to the present has been that all too frequently, the English 'teacher' is a state-sponsored hack, with bare minimum credentials required in order to convey the nuance of the language other than merely knowing the right words to fit into the correct grammar slot, a task easily accomplished through rote memorization vs. truly competent native speaker UNDERSTANDING of what is being taught! Challenge their usually non-native pronunciation for even a moment as I once did in Berlin while asked to observe and evaluate an instructor, and I though WWIII would break out, such vituperative bile as I've never experienced here in the States when doing same for an American-born German instructor:-)

Competence definitely does NOT cut both ways, and the double standard for teaching ESL here in the US for example is appalling!

Yes, the International American School of Warsaw. ias.edu.pl

Hope that helps.