Shocking! Test standards in Polish schools.

I worked with Dutch people for years and never understood a word

.....then again, I am borderline retarded

you realize there is a lot of research around language aquisition, both in childhood and in adulthood, and the idea that it's easier to learn what is similar and more difficult to learn what is different was discredited sometime in the 70s...

There are actually many - sometimes only a minute from the end of the film :-(

funny how Russian people come to Poland to study and a year later they are rabbitting away in Polish at a very high standard

A Hungarian friend learned Russian at school and at an integration meeting in Prague she kept saying that all the Czech
people were speaking a funny kind of Russian dialect


sorry, no sale

A reminder: "Shocking! school test standards"

Really? All the Finns I know have great English - one of them actually told me that in Finland, her mother is considered a bit odd for speaking Swedish but not English fluently - and this is in Rovaniemi.


Not if it's done properly - the usual idea is that the 3rd suspension is normally permanent. Kids then end up in special units (or at least, they used to - let's not talk about the failings of the UK system here) to deal with them and their problems - essentially, it's much worse of a punishment becaues they're then separated from their friends - and an exclusion on your school record is pretty shameful.

Do you remember the story from a while ago where some kid was beating up others in his primary school class in Bialystok? That's the sort of thing that suspensions deal with - it is absolutely insane that the kid can't legally be prevented from going to school.

When I was in Helsinki, everyone there spoke English very well.

Those who play truant don't seem to see it like that.


Ok, but it's a solution of a problem for school not a punishment for pupil. I don't say it's a bad idea, I just say that such kids are probably happy to have extra holidays ;)


And they are said to have the best education in Europe. They are leading in PISA.

in UK those kids stay in school while the ones that wear the wrong coloured trousers and ask too many questions get suspensions......
if any English or Welsh kid could reach the standard derided by the OP in any foreign language I would be amazed....
oh yeh that's cos they don't teach languages any more it brings down the league tables....

As someone who left Poland as a child and went to an English school, I can definitely tell you that Polish education is not at a lower standard. I had come from a strict, demanding school environment to somewhere where a lesson's entire workload took me about 15 mins to complete and the rest could be spent listening to other people yell at each other. After coming back to Poland at 16, I was terrified because the level of education I was dropped right into was far beyond what the British schooling system had prepared me for. Needless to say, I will not be showing anybody my świadectwo any time soon.

I've also seen A-level students in Britain learn what is taught in Polish gimnazja. That's a level below, if I may point out.

Sure, Polish kids aren't that great at English and maybe it should be reviewed. But you know, English speakers aren't all that good at Polish, either. (I mean, OP cannot spell the name of the exam their wife's grading. Not saying that's a crime, but languages are super hard for some people, and just as slavic languages are a nightmare to English speakers, some slavic kids have serious problems with English.) Claiming that the entire education system is sub-par based on this example is pretty ridiculous if you consider actual standards at even a regular liceum.

Seriously? I've checked the programme of A-levels for mathematics and it's beyond Polish high school programme (e.g. integrals which are not taught in Polish high school on mathematics... I heard some basics of it are on physics extended programme but I didn't have physics extended programme when I was attending school so I'm not sure; complex numbers are not tought at all)


Between gimnazjum and liceum there is a void, really. I remember from my own experience that gimnazjum was easy, while the real study began in liceum.

oecd.org/dataoecd/54/12/46643496.pdf

fwiw, PISA scores for 2009.

Ohoooo! Number 12, Poland. Hey, y'all comin' up in the world. Soon enough, y'all be trouncin' the Chinese:-)

The Finns are a very bright people. You truly have to be an intelligent person to learn their language fluently. Finnish has the most complicated grammar of any modern language.

Foreigner4 e-applauds your post.

integrals where taught in classes with mathematical profile when I was in liceum but as far as I know they never were part of matura because differently profiled classes had no integrals - I think the levels of education have dropped since I was going to schools (less demanding porgrammes) - ah we also learned the basics of complex numbers in liceum

So what? What does complexity of the language has to do with the intelligence of its native speakers. They speak it intuitively. If your silly statement was true that would mean that Poles are also one of the brightest nations in Europe. Just after Finns, Hungarians and Russians. Lol.


Poles have very bad scores in those tests. It's bearly average in many fields. Besides that the PISA tests show improvement to the previous years while everyone sees that level of knowledge and skills among teens has dropped (that also includes Finland, which has top scores in Europe). If you look on Belgium's scores, they make the borderline of the decent scores. Above that line there are the superb scores. I would be proud of Poland was among them, but it isn't so we have nothing to be proud about.

We were doing this at the age of 13 over here; however, this was a long time ago. Based upon recent experience of helping Polish children of a similar age with their maths homework, Polish standards definitely appear to be falling, not just UK standards.

Perhaps a more practical approach is what is required:

"Sławek has just returned from Katowice via Amsterdam on a Wizz Air flight. His hand baggage allowance is overloaded by 1.75 kg, because he has taken delivery of 122 3/4 ozs of high grade on the way back to the UK. Customs have managed to seize 71 1/4 ozs. What do you get?"

And no, the answer isn't "a police caution for a first offence" hehe :)

Not that it's the same but it is interesting to note that the heirarchy of species chart seems to go according to complexity of language...not the same thing as we're all the same species despite our language differences, I know, but somewhat related.

I think that many people seem to get confused by the difference between the complexity of a language, and the complexity of a language for non-native learners. However, some languages aren't even that easy to learn for native speakers, at least in the written form. Why do you think Simplified Chinese was developed?

lolzz...practical maths innit?
I personally find the "literacy" standards in UK schools shocking.The Year 8 classes in my kids' school are not streamed....the teacher teaches to the lowest level not the highest..

My boy was disgusted to be asked to spend his time in English class drawing lines between punctuation marks and their names......sadly the teacher was disgusted with him for preferring to sit there and pick his nose or roll fags or whatever. It is a shame for someone who easily understands the subjunctive mood and the case system to be disaffected with 'education' so young.

I am sure standards in Polish schools must be higher than this.

Hmm so you pretty much made up those 2 examples, right ?


What's so shocking then ? That there are people in Poland, who can't communicate in English ? Is that so feckin strange ? You expats are so weird, go to France, Italy, Spain or even Germany, you will find there many many millions of people who can't communicate in English.


LOL ! The same pathetic inferiority complex showing up again :)) You kunts have tonnes of clown degrees, mgr from let's say SGH is better than at least 99% of your MAs in business/economy, some mgr's are a joke and some MA's are a joke. Now Harry, tell us somethin about your "superior" british MA :)))) What was it in ? Social work :))) ???

good/clever pupils go to good schools, bad pupils go to bad schools.

within those classes there are pupils who mend their ways and learn and those who are influenced by others and don't.

it's really a mixed bag that changes from year to year.

i can understand 'going as fast as the slowest man'. i don't understand the lack of special classes for star pupils.

That's one school. If you are going to bang on about literacy standards then i suggest you look at your own.

People in glass houses....

true, masters degrees are for sale in UK, more or less.
I read alot of UK masters dissertations and see nothing great in them at all.

Time means - why do you have to be so rude and defensive? I have an excellent standard of English. I wasn't 'banging on' about anything.

It's one school, yes, but it's the school my kids have to attend, so I am 'allowed' to comment, I think.

Please don't reply by pointing out missing commas in my posts or some such nonsense, thanks.

[quote=rozumiemnic]Please don't reply by pointing out missing commas in my posts or some such nonsense, thanks.

So correct punctuation is nonsense?

when we talk about schooling standards one also has to take into consideration that there is negative selection for the teaching positions - it's because teaching pays you so little in Poland (don't really know about the situation in England) (I mean many people who have the ability still won't follow teacher's profession because they cannot really provide for families working as a teacher)

you said that, not me.
I am very keen on correct punctuation.
Just that this is a forum, not a dissertation, and I could kind of guess what was coming next.
Go on where was the missing comma?
If you haven't got anything better to do....

Your quote not mine.

I said punctuation i didn't specify a comma.

It's quite common here too... That's why I'm not saying Polish mgr is always better than British MA (it depends on school/course) but to say opposite is laughable...


It's true in 90's Poland... Now you can more and more often hear about people desperately trying to get a job at school... partly because salaries have improved... partly because unemployment rate among graduates is so terribly high...

Bingo.

metro.co.uk/weird/888744-beyonce-course-offered-by-rutgers-university-in-new-jersey