page_title: Education in the Polish People's Republic
section_title: Vocational education
hierarchical_section_title: Education in the Polish People's Republic / Vocational education
caption_attribution_description: Students at a vocational school in Poszów, Poland, are shown around an experimental mine. From the 1964 book Twenty Years of the People's Republic of Poland, photographer not specified and no copyright notice in the book.
context_page_description: Education in the Polish People's Republic in years of its existence was controlled by the communist state, which provided primary schools, secondary schools, vocational education and universities. Education in communist Poland was compulsory from age 7 to 15.
context_section_description: In the 1920s and 1930s, vocational education did exist on a relatively adequate scale, and a fairly large number of students (110,000 in 1937-1938) attended vocational institutions. However, the standard of education was very low. Many did not have textbooks, and almost none could offer any sort of environment for students to put into practice what they had learned. Lack of widespread industrialization in Poland at the time meant that many graduates were not guaranteed a job, and only 4.1% attended complete secondary trade schools that allowed them to move on to the university level.
  As rapid industrialization was one of the key communist priorities, so too were the vocational schools improved. The Ministries of Education and Industry began to set up new schools. By 1946-1947, there were 60,000 more students enrolled in vocational institutes than in 1937-1938. Standardized textbooks were published on a large scale, the required number of hours of theory was raised to 18, and a number of new subjects based on more modern technological skills were introduced.
  In 1949, the Central Agency for Vocational Training was set up to sculpt the curriculum so that the demands of Poland's planned economy could be met. Existing vocational schools were converted into preparatory vocational schools, basic trade schools that trained skilled labour and vocational secondary schools. Its task completed, the Agency was absorbed into the Ministry of Education in 1956. In the same year the first two-year agricultural vocational schools were built, which offered training for rural students who wished to be farmers. By 1962, there were three thousand of these, with 100,000 students officially enrolled.
  The number of students in vocational institutions grew rapidly from the 1930s to the 1960s, with 207,529 students in 1937/1938 and 1,371,400 in 1963/1964.
caption: Students at the Basic Mining School at Pszów are shown around an experimental mine
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