Family education will disappear from school timetables. In its place, with a significantly expanded program and probably more hours, a new subject will appear: health education. The first classes will start at the beginning of the 2025/2026 school year, but preparations for the launch of the new subject have already begun.
Health education instead of WDŻ. Ministers announced changes in schools
Published April 12, 2024 13:32
fot. Piotr Wójcik
- Taking care of health and health education are among the most important areas of state responsibility. We will support Polish education with an indispensable component - the health education component," informs Education Minister Barbara Nowacka.
An expert team has been established to prepare the assumptions and curriculum basis for a new subject: health education. It will replace the existing VET and will have a much broader program. It will include mental health components, aspects of physical health and nutrition, prevention, as well as addiction problems, and sex education and human knowledge.
Health education will appear in schools on September 1, 2025. Work is now beginning on the core curriculum for grades 4-8 in elementary schools and 1-3 in secondary schools. The necessary number of hours will also be worked out. Among the experts who will work on developing the assumptions for the new subject will be Rev. Arkadiusz Nowak, president of the Institute for Patients' Rights and Health Education, Dr. Aleksandra Lewandowska, national consultant for child psychiatry, or Prof. Agnieszka Mastalerz-Migas, national consultant in family medicine.
- We would like to see the topic of health care, prevention, taken particularly seriously. If we don't start this education already at school, then later we will be watching a society increasingly unaware of how to prevent disease, how to counteract the effects of lack of exercise, how to react in an emergency situation," Barbara Nowacka stressed.
The changes will also include the training of teaching staff. Postgraduate programs and courses will be developed so that in the time before the new subject is launched, teachers will complete their knowledge. The subject will also be subject to extensive public consultation. The first information on this will appear in June.
- Prevention is a priority. It is the most important and is what allows us to maintain a long life in good health. It is hard to imagine a better time to teach ourselves, our children about what health is, how to take care of their health, than just school," comments Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna.
- If we were to use common sense in educating our children, we would have to ask ourselves why we teach our children about what continents we have on the globe, what countries lie on them, but not teach them how to take care of their own health, themselves and their loved ones? More than 50 percent of whether we are healthy depends on ourselves," he adds.
Sports and Tourism Minister Slawomir Nitras stresses that this is another element of inter-ministerial cooperation aimed at ensuring that there are no stressed and obese children in schools.
- It seems obvious to parents that a child will return from school physically more mature and as a knowledgeable person. Too rarely do we ask ourselves why a child goes to school and after a few years comes out obese and without motor competence. School is there to teach. We want children to see the correlation between what kind of motor competence they acquire and how healthy they are and how long they will live," says Minister Slawomir Nitras.
