Barbara Nowacka, head of the Ministry of National Education: there will be inspections of final exams at the School in the Cloud

The Cloud School is a non-public, free primary school and general secondary school, where all students study as part of home education. It runs an educational platform that allows students to consult with teachers or additional online competence workshops. At the end of each school year, students have written and oral classification exams.

During the press conference in Warsaw of the Minister of Education Barbara Nowacka was asked to comment on the results of the high school exams at the School in the Cloud, where “every fourth student failed the exam.” She was also asked whether her ministry was looking at the platform.

Nowacka assessed that “the results of the high school exams and school exams of children who were educated in this non-public institution raise great concern”. She informed that she asked the curators to take a “particularly careful” look not only at the high school exam results, but also at how they relate to the students' final grades.

– We have signals that the final grades of students were exceptionally high and do not translate into the results of the final exams – she added. – The Ministry is in contact with the curators, within which this institution operates. The curators will look at the results of the final exams, especially in correlation with how these young people were assessed, what final grades they received – she noted.

The boss MEN she pointed out that “children who are part of this company, Szkoła w Chmura, passed the Polish language exam at the same level as Ukrainian children, foreign children, for whom Polish is very often a completely new language (language)”.

According to Nowacka, the way in which the educational process is shaped in this particular facility is worrying, as “children do not have constant contact with teachers”.

At the same time, she admitted that there are different forms of homeschooling. – Sometimes it works wonderfully, the entire educational burden falls on the parents, on groups of parents, and these are schools that function very well, achieving really good results – she said. In the case of the School in the Cloud – she added – we are dealing with “an undertaking in which these good results are clearly not achieved”.

When asked if the ministry could contact NIK with a request for an audit due to the fact that “Warsaw cannot enforce the return of the educational subsidy in the amount of over PLN 20 million”, Nowacka replied that the case is “deeply outrageous, because abuses in the matter of using the educational subsidy are harmful to children – those studying in other schools, children who require special needs, care – and that's what the subsidy is for”.

She noted that the ministry will “watch it very carefully, cooperating with the city of Warsaw and Vice President Renata Kaznowska.”

Asked whether the ministry has the tools to act on this matter, the head of the MEN replied that the ministry “is currently working very intensively on regulations that will regulate the functioning of subsidies in special cases”. Referring to the School in the Cloud, she added that “the problem is not only that a company or school abuses it, but that it still does not affect the way the subsidy is awarded, i.e. despite the fact that we know that the subsidy was abused in the case of the School in the Cloud, in the following months it receives further benefits, still with the burden that it may be used in an inappropriate way”.

She said that the effects of the work on the regulations will be seen in September due to the long and – in her opinion – rather neglected legislative process.

Asked if she meant, for example, “cutting the subsidy to 0”, she recalled that the subsidy “is there to ensure that the child has the best possible conditions for learning and education, to support the student”. She noted that depending on the type of school it varies, in home education for up to 200 people “the subsidy is in full, whereas in the case where we are dealing with a 99% or 100% remote education formula, the costs incurred per student are much lower”.

Nowacka also noted that at the moment there is no work on changes to the subsidy. “I understand parents who often look for a different form of education for their child. However, for the ministry, it is fundamental that children are educated well and safely. When we see the results of the high school final exams and eighth-grade exams, which cause us to have doubts about the quality of education, it will absolutely be subject to control,” she emphasized.

After the conference, the Minister of Education responded to her allegations of alleged financial irregularities by the School in the Cloud Foundation.

As assessed, “it is untrue to say that the city of Warsaw is unable to enforce the return of the educational subsidy”. It was added that the foundation has not yet received the city's final decision after the expenditure audit for 2022, and the reservations raised are currently being considered.

“It is outrageous for an official of such a high rank as the minister to publicly suggest that there are irregularities in the spending of the educational subsidy in the absence of a final decision from the office controlling us,” the information sent to PAP reads.

Referring to Minister Nowacka's suggestion of the possibility of blocking the payment of the educational subsidy during the audit, the foundation assessed that this “contradicts all principles of law”. It was emphasized that the implementation of such a postulate could lead to the suspension of any schools or educational projects based on the mere commencement of the audit procedure.

The Foundation expressed its readiness to cooperate with Minister Nowacka on matters that raised her doubts.