Additional fees for parents? Local governments want changes in subsidizing kindergartens

• In 2025, significant changes were introduced in the education financing system in Poland. The previous educational subsidy was replaced by a new model based on the so-called "educational needs".
• Local governments associated in the Silesian Union of Municipalities and Districts believe that a review of the principles of financing preschool education is now necessary, in particular with regard to non-public facilities.
• As local government officials emphasize, subsidizing non-public kindergartens comes at the expense of residents. Meanwhile, non-public facilities "have the opportunity to increase their income, among other things, through additional fees from parents."

According to data from the Central Statistical Office, as of September 30, 2024, there were 22.5 thousand preschool education facilities in Poland - including kindergartens (including special ones), preschool departments in primary schools and other forms, such as preschool education teams and preschool points. About 30% of these facilities are non-public entities that receive subsidies from municipal budgets.

The Silesian Union of Municipalities and Districts emphasizes the need to ensure transparency, coherence and adequacy of the principles of their financing.

We believe that maintaining the current rules for the functioning of subsidies for non-public preschool institutions introduces unnecessary misunderstandings regarding the amount of the subsidy transferred

- we read in the position of ŚZGiP.

According to the organization, non-public facilities should be subsidized "in a transparent and uniform manner throughout the country, and the amount of the subsidy should not be a derivative of the decision of local government authorities, which additionally allocate their own funds for the operation of their kindergartens, at the expense of implementing other tasks to which they are obligated."

According to the association, non-public institutions "have the opportunity to increase their income, among others, through additional fees from parents".

Subsidizing non-public kindergartens comes at the expense of residents, because each time municipalities increase the financing of public kindergartens (e.g. by introducing additional classes, extending the opening hours of kindergartens, purchasing teaching aids, etc.), they automatically have to increase the subsidies for non-public preschool education facilities.

- emphasizes Dariusz Skrobol, chairman of the General Assembly of ŚZGiP.

Despite the limitation of the basic amount of subsidy for non-public kindergartens to 75%, public institutions are - in the opinion of the union - in a worse financial situation - especially since they must apply many restrictions resulting from the applicable law (including the principles contained in the Teachers' Charter), and non-public institutions are exempt from many of these restrictions.

The Union wants the amount of subsidies for non-public kindergartens to be equivalent to the amount calculated per child as part of educational needs , in accordance with the applicable algorithm for distributing funds, i.e. as in the case of non-public schools where compulsory education is implemented (calculation of subsidies on the basis of amounts due to local government units as part of the general distribution of educational funds).

Currently, the amount of subsidies for non-public kindergartens is determined at the local level, which results in a large variation in rates and a lack of clear criteria for determining their amount, as exemplified by numerous court judgments.

Silesian local governments also draw attention to other challenges that require urgent legislative and organizational actions:

• lack of consistent nationwide guidelines for monitoring the use of subsidies in non-public institutions,
• differences in the costs of maintaining kindergartens resulting from local conditions, not taken into account in the current model,
• difficulties in planning municipal budgets due to dynamic changes in the number of children attending non-public kindergartens,
• difficulties in planning a network of public kindergartens (local government units have no influence on the number of non-public kindergartens opened in their area, nor knowledge about such plans).