According to the law, schools are required to provide psychological and pedagogical assistance to students. They need it, among others dyslexics, students from other countries, people with behavioral disorders or ADHD. The problem often concerns also very talented students in particular disciplines. They get bored in regular lessons and need extra classes to keep them going. It is estimated that 1/5 of students require such assistance, unfortunately schools do not have the money to hire specialists.
Until now, the money for employing a psychologist or school educator was provided by local governments. Unfortunately, the limited resources at their disposal mean that officials use the provision that psychological and pedagogical help can be provided as part of current activities, i.e. during lessons, and do not employ specialists.
What is worse, there is no shortage of local governments that falsify data and state in official documents that there are no children in their district who need the help of a pedagogue or psychologist. Experts from the Ministry of National Education emphasize that in such situations the inspections do not help much. The self-government is covered because everything is correct on paper.
How are schools dealing with the problem? In some institutions, teachers conduct such activities on a voluntary basis. In turn, in Krakow, the principals of primary schools in recent years devoted free card hours to help, which obliged teachers to work longer with students. Unfortunately, this year the Ministry of National Education liquidated them.
NIK: 44 percent schools without a full-time psychologist or teacher
The lack of access to psychological help has already been detected by the Supreme Chamber of Control. Her report shows that as much as 44 percent. schools do not have a full-time psychologist or educator. The worst was in technical schools (60% of institutions did not have them), the best – in the middle schools that have just been closed, where there is no specialist “only” in every third institution. In rural areas, there are only 0,6 psychologist jobs per XNUMX students.
Lack of money means that schools only seek help when they are dealing with extreme cases. According to experts, this approach will only exacerbate the problem. It will affect not only the child who needs the support of a psychologist or educator, but other students and teachers.