New challenges for education

The fourth industrial revolution has led to a growing demand for qualified professionals. How to educate young people with regard to the needs of the modern digital economy? How to shape the competences of the future? What professionals does the Polish economy need? What does the cooperation between companies and vocational schools look like? What are the benefits and barriers resulting from the cooperation between companies and the educational environment? How do vocational training and school-business partnerships support programs such as Worldskills and Vocational Skill Competitions? What is the role of EU programs (Erasmus+, PO WER, EKS) in vocational education? Finally, what effects has the pandemic brought on education and what are the scenarios for the development of the situation? These are some of the issues discussed in Karpacz at the Economic Forum by participants of the debate "Vocational school of the future – labour market challenges".

Management during crisis

Marzena Machałek, Secretary of State in the Ministry of National Education, emphasized that the introduction of distance learning was not an experiment but a form of managing education in times of crisis. When it was necessary to take quick steps in the face of the lockdown. "However, distance education is not our target model. It can complement stationary education but it is not the goal that we should set ourselves today," she said. "Students develop best in contact with other students and teachers. Very motivated students are doing well but most of students are people who need relationships, contact, exchange of thoughts, emotions. Only then education ca be complete," she added.

She emphasized that the ministry is constantly monitoring what is happening in schools and has prepared scenarios for various situations. "Among almost 50 thousand institutions, only about 50 provide education in the distance or hybrid model," she said. She stated that the experience of distance learning should also be used in the field of vocational education. "We approached vocational training with particular care because we knew that some skills can only be acquired in real working conditions or in similar conditions. That is why we quickly unfroze the education areas that allowed students to actually be in places where they received practical education," said Marzena Machałek.

She reminded that the Ministry of Education prepared a regulation setting out the organizational school models. "It provides for a stationary education model with restrictions, i.e. the guidelines of the Chief Sanitary Inspector (GIS), the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education, as well as the hybrid, mixed and completely distance models. On the other hand, distance education deepens inequalities between children, it deepens cultural inequalities. We should pay particular attention to this fact. We have given over PLN 300 million to local governments to purchase digital equipment to be provided to children who are in a difficult situation. However, we must remember that distance education is only an educational element which can additionally develop competences. We want children to learn at school in a modern way, using the digital communication technology. In the pandemic, we all missed normal forms of contact. We need them," Marzena Machałek emphasized.

Important competence development

Dr Paweł Poszytek, the General Director of the Foundation for the Development of the Education System which is the national operator of the Erasmus + program and other EU programs, spoke about developing competences. "These programs deal with the development of competences in pupils, students, teachers and everyone involved in education," he explained.

"As part of Erasmus+, we run the eTwinning program. In the last few years, even before the pandemic occurred or anyone had even imagined it, 70 thousand teachers in Poland had participated international digital projects, cooperated with partner schools from other countries, e.g. Germany and the Netherlands, and performed their regular teaching activities. They had supplemented those activities with international digital cooperation, i.e. they had jointly developed digital materials, adapted them to the didactic process and stored them on an appropriate digital platform. In Poland, we have 650 thousand teachers. Those 70 thousand is a dozen or so percent of teachers who have already performed digital projects, much more complicated and demanding than ordinary distance teaching. For them, remote classes are something completely natural," pointed out Paweł Poszytek. "Of course, this is not the whole truth about the Polish education system but I am talking about the area in which we operate and this is how we see education."

"But it fits exactly what the Minister said. Those projects complemented and made the education process more attractive. But nothing can actually replace real relations in schools. We also see that, although these projects do not provide for youth exchanges and there is no funding for such events, at some point, after months or years of cooperation, program participants will meet each other. They wait for this direct contact. I am only talking about the eTwinning program. There are other European, national and regional programs in which teachers prepare for the digital world, less in the context of a pandemic and more in the context of modernity and what a modern school should look like," said Paweł Poszytek.

He reminded of the assessments made by high-rank European Commission official who came to Poland in recent years and said that a lot had been achieved when it comes to digitizing schools in a broader perspective. Not only in terms of competences, but also infrastructure, although it has certainly turned out to be insufficient in the light of the pandemic. On the other hand, the situation was similar in other countries. "We are not the worst in this respect. We can even say that we are in upper middle rank," emphasized Paweł Poszytek. "Of course, there are many problems. There are teachers who failed to cope with this challenge, there are infrastructure problems and some young people do not have the opportunity to learn from home," he added.

Paweł Salamon, chef at Smolarnia Hotel, vocational teacher at the Gastronomy School Complex in Gorzów Wielkopolski, leader of the WorldSkills Poland team spoke about the challenges of vocational education in the context of distance learning. "In my field of teaching, we do not focus on cooking alone. We use different teaching models to teach students different competences – systematics, independence, responsibility and various actions," said Paweł Salamon.

Krzysztof Drynda, Vice-President of the Wałbrzych Special Economic Zone "INVEST-PARK", spoke about the experiences related to distance work from the practical perspective. "We were positively surprised. The efficiency of employees has not decreased, on the contrary, it has even increased in some cases. Of course, people with small children are in a special situation," he said.

In the context of education, he pointed out that, due to the changes in various economies, it is difficult to predict what professions will be in demand in the future. However, he is convinced that the ability to constantly learn and expand the scope of one's competences will be of key importance on the labour market because the times when we work in one profession all our lives are a thing of the past.