Page:CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3.pdf/63

 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3

'''FIGURE 36. School buildings (U/OU)''' (pictures)


 * Modern kindergartens, Warsaw
 * Warsaw University, inside main gate
 * General secondary school, Grabowek, Gdansk province

strides in pedagogic training have resulted in generally good facilities in all but some rural areas. Adequacy of trained personnel has been a more persistent problem. In October 1969 the government announced that for the first time in the postwar period there was no shortage of teachers in Polish elementary schools; at the same time, however, it was admitted that secondary education was short of some 20,000 teachers. Figure 36 shows postwar kindergarten and secondary school buildings, as well as traditional buildings flanking the main court of Warsaw University.

The government's emphasis on mass education is illustrated by the data in Figure 37 showing the number of schools, students, and teachers in the prewar and postwar periods. Since the mid-1960's about 10% of all children of preschool age have been enrolled in either creches (day nurseries) or kindergartens, although there is a wide discrepancy in this figure between urban and rural areas; in the latter case, there are indications that less than 1% attend such preschool centers. Greatest strides have been made in the compulsory stages of education—the 8-year basic school—which is attended by over 99% of children aged 7 through 14.

School construction has been rapid and has often been inadequately reflected in statistical data. The decline in the absolute number of elementary schools in the postwar in contrast to the prewar period, for example, reflects not only wartime destruction and Poland's territorial losses, but also the elimination of small, one-room, substandard rural schools which have been replaced by larger buildings with a larger number of classrooms.

The rise in vocational and adult education has been particularly significant. This rise has paralleled the government's campaign to eliminate illiteracy between 1949 and 1951, when the problem was officially declared nonexistent. Latest official data show that in 1968 illiteracy amounted to less than 2% of the total population. When measured as the percentage of persons 15 years of age or older, the illiteracy rate averaged 4.6% during the decade of the 1960's. This is below the European average of 5.8%, but somewhat above that of developed Western European countries. The effective elimination of

56

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3