ICT usage in the field of education - opportunities and challenges

 

Jaranowska, Monika

1. Poland is the biggest of the New Member States of the EU, which joined the Union during last round of enlargement. The size of the Polish territory and population almost equals Spain. This makes Poland a politically quite influential country within the EU25. Economically, however, is Poland under average of the accession countries. Its still weak economic base is even more complicated by the great differences between regions, especially at the level of the sub-regions (NUTS 3 level). This situation makes it very likely, that Poland will for a long time be the biggest recipient of European Cohesion Policy (for more see www.europa.edu.pl).

2. Poland is also quite week in terms of fulfilling the goals of the European Lisbon Agenda, which promotes liberalization, development of the labor market and technological advancement, especially in the field of information and computer technology (ICT) as well as in telecommunications. The World Competitiveness Report and the World Technology Report, prepared by the World Economic Forum show Poland loosing the technology battle, if nothing happens very quickly. In the year 2004 Poland has taken the 72nd position under the 104 researched countries, this very bad performance in 2004 also means a significant drop form the 47th position which Poland had in 2003! The modern technology situation is especially bad in the Polish public sector.

3. Taking all this into account, Poland on the other hand is also having the perspective of greatly increased EU Structural Funds transfers under the future EU budget 2007-2013. Poland can expect up to 140 billion EURO within 7 years from 2013 onwards. This will be about eight times more funding than is available now. This is also a great chance to improve things quickly, but the main challenge is now to make the best use of this funds, under special reference for the educational sector.

4. The Polish public sector lacks dynamism and momentum in the area of ITC development. However, the field of Polish education is a surprising exception of the rule. This is partly connected to the EU funding: such as financing Computer Labs for schools under the European Social Fund programme. Lots of work, however, has been done for ITC based, modern education, without the support of EU funds. Already since 1998, the Government is concerned to bring more computer labs into Polish schools. This efforts are now greatly enhanced, since EU funding has become available. The Government work is successfully supported by the NGO based Interkl@sa programme (www.interklasa.pl) An important result of all joint efforts is, that the average number of school children per computer in schools will drop after the year 2006 from over 30 to 11 kids per computer unit.

5. Significantly important, is also the issue of educational content which can be taught through ICT media, such as Internet. The challenges here are very many: security, child protection, high quality of content (quality of language), etc. One successful example of what can be done even with small funding is the Polish Educational Portal www.interklasa.pl. An extremely successful non-profit, NGO based activity with NO Government funding (so far). The major challenge however will be to secure future funding for such activities.

6. In this efforts for high quality modern education, the Government enjoys support by NGOs and the by the private sector. Lots of this support has been now consolidated within the Polish Competence Centre for eGovernment and eEducation (PCC) in Warsaw, which has taken off successfully in the Spring of 2005 (see www.egov.edu.pl)