Across Poland last year, regional education authorities issued nearly 300 opinions allowing the closure or restructuring of schools and preschools, as falling birth rates and rising costs push local governments toward difficult decisions, state news agency PAP reported.
The trend is expected to deepen over the next decade.
The education ministry forecasts that the number of children and teenagers in the school system will fall by more than 1.5 million between the 2026/2027 and 2042/2043 school years. That would mean an average annual loss of around 110,000 students.
Lubelskie province in eastern Poland recorded the highest number of such cases. The regional education authority there said local governments submitted 85 resolutions in 2025 seeking opinions on school or preschool closures and restructurings. They resulted in 54 closures and 22 restructuring efforts.
“The crisis is really only now heading toward schools,” Lublin Mayor Krzysztof Żuk said. “There will be no rescue for many small schools because economics will be decisive.”
He added that annual birth cohorts in Lublin are now about half the size the current education system was built to serve.
Żuk also said the number of children in public preschools in Lublin fell by 1,000 between 2023 and 2025, which he said would almost certainly lead to preschool closures first, followed later by school closures.
Worrying numbers have also emerged in the southern Silesian province. The education authority in the regional capital Katowice said that in the 2024/2025 school year it received 56 resolutions from local authorities on planned closures or restructuring operations, of which 50 were cleared for closure.
Sosnowiec Mayor Arkadiusz Chęciński said the full impact is still ahead. “This situation will explode in the next few years,” he said, adding that depopulation is now most visible in the youngest preschool age groups.
He said the city of Sosnowiec is not yet planning school closures, but has already started shutting preschool sections and will likely have to close entire facilities in the next few years.
Elsewhere, the regional education authority in Kraków received 53 applications on planned school and preschool closures or restructuring measures and cleared 28 of those.
In the southwestern Dolnośląskie region, 25 of 39 applications were approved. Other provinces also reported significant numbers, including Wielkopolskie with 29 applications having received authorizations, Lubuskie with 24, Opolskie with 25, and 22 in Świętokrzyskie.
Local government leaders say the problem goes beyond demographics and reaches the heart of municipal budgets.
Łódź Mayor Hanna Zdanowska said education would be the biggest pressure point for local finances, adding that she could not yet say whether municipalities would be able to cope with steadily rising costs.
In Proszowice, a town in southern Poland, the mayor said the local government had already decided to close a nursery and expected a sharp drop in preschool demand in the coming years, followed by fewer classes in primary schools.
The central government says it is aware of the scale of the problem and is preparing legislation meant to help keep very small schools open.
Education Minister Barbara Nowacka has said 131 schools in Poland currently have fewer than 25 pupils, while more than 230 have between 25 and 50. She said that in small towns and villages, a school often serves as an important center of local community life.
The ministry’s main proposal would allow local governments to use school buildings for other purposes as well, and would require consultations with parents before a school is closed.
Local officials broadly welcome the idea of making better use of school buildings, but many say it will not stop closures.
Chęciński said the ministry’s plan would merely extend the life of the buildings that house schools.
Grzegorz Kubalski, deputy director of the office of the Association of Polish Counties, said the real solution would be clear funding standards for education tasks, arguing that without them, hopes of saving every small school are unrealistic.
(rt/gs)
Source: samorzad.pap.pl, polskieradio24.pl