Tusk Government’s Educational Reform Seen as a Threat to Polish Schools. Ordo Iuris and Broad Coalition Call for Presidential Veto

Passed by the Sejm and the Senate, the Act of November 21, 2025, amending the Education Law and certain other acts, which is part of a profound, dangerous curriculum reform in the Polish school system, is currently awaiting the President’s signature. The assumptions behind comprehensive changes, which the Ordo Iuris Institute wrote about, among other things, in analyses from August, September, and November, raise serious and justified concerns among educational, teaching, and parental communities. Supported by Ordo Iuris experts, the Coalition to Save the Polish School (KROPS), currently comprising 91 non-governmental organizations, appealed to the President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, to veto the bill sent to him for signature on November 28. Experts from KROPS and Ordo Iuris point out that the planned reform not only fails to address the real problems of Polish schools but also introduces an education model detached from the anthropological, cultural, and constitutional foundations of upbringing.

Coalition Press Conference

On December 3, at the Secretariat of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, a press conference titled “‘Reform26.Compass of Tomorrow’ is a threat to Polish schools” was held. The meeting was moderated by Elżbieta Lachman, the press spokesperson for KROPS, and the experts’ presentations provided an objective analysis of the destructive nature of the changes being implemented by Poland’s Ministry of National Education. Of the five speakers, two were representatives of the Ordo Iuris Institute, whose presentations focused on the substantive and legal aspects of the criticized reform.

Artur Górecki, Ph.D., the Director of the Ordo Iuris Educational Center, emphasized that the reform being carried out by the Ministry of National Education, instead of leading students to intellectual and moral maturity, is becoming a social experiment that forgets the foundation, namely the recognition of who the human person is and what human nature requires. He pointed out that the new core curriculum that MEN wants to introduce is not a tool for intellectual development, but rather for ideological indoctrination and molding the student according to whatever the current political and economic demands are.

“It’s not a person’s development as a person that counts; what counts is this utilitarian dimension,” Górecki pointed out.

In turn, Att. Marek Puzio, a senior analyst at Ordo Iuris, who coordinates the “Let’s Protect Children! School and Education” program at Ordo Iuris, pointed out, among other things, that the Act of November 21, 2025, contains a dangerous principle in the form of default parental consent for a child’s participation in elective classes.

–”Such a situation provided for in the law may result in a parent not receiving timely information about certain elective classes, which also fall within the sphere of child-rearing that is primarily reserved for parents, and only finding out after the fact that their child took part, for example, in a talk on tolerance and preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It is therefore a real threat to the constitutional principle of parents’ primacy in raising their children,” the lawyer emphasized.

Puzio also recalled the citizens’ bill “Yes to Religion and Ethics in School,” which was signed by over half a million citizens and has already had its first reading in the Sejm. He also expressed his hope that the new Speaker of the Sejm would not block work on the bill.

The common message of the conference was a clear statement: “Reform26” is a dangerous experiment for the quality of Polish education, the preservation of Polish students’ cultural and national identity, and parents’ rights in schools.

Appeal by KROPS and Ordo Iuris to the President of the Republic of Poland

The Coalition to Save the Polish School submitted a letter to the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, calling on President Karol Nawrocki to veto the Act of November 21, 2025, amending the Education Law and certain other acts. The KROPS letter points out, among other things, the anticipated consequences of implementing the reform: stripping the school of its function of transmitting the Polish cultural code, the gradual lowering of educational standards, and opening the school to ideological propaganda.

The KROPS letter, together with a cover letter signed by Advocate Jerzy Kwaśniewski, the President of the Ordo Iuris Institute, was submitted to the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland on November 28, that is, the same day on which the bill dated November 21 was transmitted to the President for signature.

National public consultations – unequivocal opposition to the reform

From November 23 to December 1, KROPS held the first stage of nationwide consultations regarding the new core curriculum and the direction of changes in the education system. A total of 1,659 people took part in them, and the results unequivocally show widespread opposition to the Ministry of National Education’s reforms. From the results, we learn, among other things, that:

– 85% of respondents call for the elimination of the health education class, which covers comprehensive, LGBT-friendly sex-education with elements of gender ideology, and for discussing health-related issues in other classes, as had been the case before the current school year, and additionally for reinstating classes that promote the value of the family based on a lasting marriage between a woman and a man;

– 99% indicate that it is parents, not the state and the school, who should decide on the values underlying a child’s upbringing.
– 97% call for an immediate halt to the reform and the start of a broad public debate.

The results of the consultations were also formally submitted to the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland as evidence of the lack of a public mandate for the reform.

The Coalition to Save the Polish School (KROPS), with the active support of Ordo Iuris experts, is currently preparing comments on the draft regulation of the Minister of Education establishing a new general education core curriculum for elementary schools. A comprehensive report on the draft core curriculum for history, authored by the director of the Ordo Iuris Educational Center, Artur Górecki Ph.D., was published on the Institute’s website as early as December 3. In it, the author points out that “as a result of changes to the core curriculum for the subject of history in elementary schools—as of September 1, 2024—the scope of instructional content has been significantly reduced” and that “these actions should be regarded as destructive to history education, as they lead to a break with the culture of rootedness, since they reject elements constitutive of Latin civilization and of Polish national culture”.

The conclusions and comments contained in the report will form part of the opinion submitted to the Polish education ministry as part of the public consultations running until December 18 on the draft regulation on the new core curriculum for elementary schools.