Warsaw has lost more than 4,500 preschool-age children from its education system over the past two years, a drop city officials say is steeper than expected.
A total of 9,245 children qualified for preschool places this year, down from 11,642 a year earlier and nearly 13,800 two years ago, Deputy Mayor Renata Kaznowska said after the first stage of the admissions process.
Kaznowska said the city expects the number of preschool-age children to fall by up to 15,000 by the end of 2030.
She added that Warsaw had based its planning on demographic forecasts as well as local analyses of building permits and land-use plans, but the decline has been faster than anticipated.
“It has never been this bad,” she said.
At the same time, the city says every child should still be able to get a place in a public preschool this year.
After the first stage of admissions, more than 4,681 places were still available. City officials say children who did not get in during the first round were usually affected by mistakes in applications or by applying only to preschools that had already filled up.
Warsaw has 362 public preschools, including special preschools, serving around 40,000 kids. The city also once relied heavily on preschool units inside primary schools, but their number has dropped from more than 360 to 66.
Kaznowska said the fall in child numbers would have been even more severe without youngsters arriving from abroad.
Warsaw schools and preschools now educate children from 115 countries, and the biggest increase came after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Nearly 18,000 children and teenagers from Ukraine entered Warsaw’s education system after fleeing the war, helping delay the full effect of the city’s demographic decline.
Kaznowska also defended controversial preschool closures in districts such as Mokotów and Śródmieście. She said some facilities had so few pupils that keeping them open no longer made sense, especially when nearby preschools also had many empty places.
In Śródmieście, she said, 341 children applied for 943 available places this year.
She rejected any blanket rule forcing the same class size across the city, saying each district and each preschool needed to be assessed separately.
She also said Warsaw was increasingly responding to rising demand for special education by creating more inclusive and special preschool classes and converting some existing facilities.
(rt/gs)
Source: samorzad.pap.pl