Nawrocki last week blocked plans for such a register, prompting critics to accuse him of bowing to pressure from private companies and favouring foreign businesses over domestic interests.
Education Minister Barbara Nowacka said on Thursday that her ministry had formally asked Tomasz Siemoniak, the government minister in charge of security services, to examine whether lobbying influenced Nawrocki's opposition to the proposed system.
The legislation, vetoed by Nawrocki on August 28, would have allowed the government to pilot a free, state-run electronic school register during the 2026/2027 school year.
The system was intended eventually to provide an alternative to commercial electronic registers widely used by Polish schools.
The education ministry "sent a request to the security services on Tuesday, asking them to look into whether lobbying took place around the president, but also more broadly among other groups that strongly campaigned against the free, secure state e-register," Nowacka told reporters.
Asked what she expected from the request, she said she first wanted to establish whether lobbying had occurred.
"If it did, appropriate action will be necessary," she said.
Nowacka first raised the possibility of asking the security services to investigate after the veto. She said she had seen correspondence submitted to the ministry that had been prepared in cooperation with two major commercial e-register providers and argued that some of its wording closely resembled the president's justification for blocking the law.
She said she did not know whether "improper lobbying" had taken place or whether people had simply persuaded the president that blocking the state system was preferable.
Nawrocki said he supported the idea of a state-run electronic school register in principle but objected to the legislation on several grounds, including data security and cost.
He argued that a centralized system would contain sensitive information on pupils, including their national identification numbers, photographs, grades, attendance and details of special educational needs.
In his view, the legislation did not provide sufficient guarantees governing protection of the data and access to it.
Nowacka rejected those concerns, saying the state system would not collect unnecessary information and that pupils’ data would be secure.
The planned pilot was intended to test how the system worked in schools, including the transfer and protection of data, before a wider rollout.
Teachers, school administrators, pupils and parents would also have been surveyed about their experience with it.
The government planned to introduce the full system from the 2027/2028 school year. It would have been integrated with Poland’s Education Information System (SIO), the central database used to collect information about schools, teachers and pupils.
Nowacka said the state e-register would cost about PLN 20 million (EUR 4.6 million, USD 5.4 million) a year.
She argued that commercial providers currently make considerably more from the school e-register market, including through charges imposed on parents for additional services in their mobile applications.
The president's veto prevents the pilot from proceeding under the legislation passed by parliament.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR/PAP