The Minister of Education and Merit, on an institutional visit to Krakow in view of the Day of Remembrance: “Ensuring educational continuity for Ukrainian students. The EU states take charge of rebuilding their schools, dividing the tasks with a systemic plan".
As part of the institutional trip to Krakow, in Poland, in view of the Day of Remembrance, the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara today had a bilateral meeting with his Polish counterpart Przemyslaw Czarnek. The trip, which includes a visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp for tomorrow, is also attended by a selection of students from the Giovanni Bertacchi Institute in Lecco, who met their peers from Krakow.
"Italy has a strong bond with Poland, both culturally and economically, and this meeting is an opportunity to consolidate the friendly relations between our countries", declared the Minister. “One of the main objectives of my mandate is to strengthen international relations, starting with those with the Member States of the European Union. Furthermore, the economic link between the two countries is of great importance: around 2700 Italian companies operate in Poland, in addition to over 1000 sole proprietorships, which employ around 90.000 people”.
Minister Valditara said he was satisfied with the bilateral collaboration and the positive experiences fielded by the Polish government for the promotion of the Italian language in Poland and underlined that "the consolidation and expansion of the cultural and economic ties between our countries must be based on greater collaboration between our education and training systems. Our respective Ministries are working on the renewal of the Executive Program of Collaboration in Culture and Education for the years 2022-2025. We will encourage partnerships between institutions in the two countries to create centers of professional excellence. We also aim to recognize the Italian upper secondary school title to young Poles who have obtained a high school diploma from schools with bilingual classes in the Republic of Poland. It will also be possible to start extra-curricular Polish language courses in Italian schools where there are large communities of students of Polish origin. All this with a view to fulfilling the European Education Area, of which the main pillars are mobility for learning and the mutual recognition of qualifications, also taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the Erasmus+ programme".
"During the recent OECD Ministerial Meeting", added the Minister, "I proposed to set up an OECD database on the fight against early school leaving and to organize a joint meeting of representatives of the Ministries of Education and Finance of the OECD area, also in order to identify new forms of financing in favor of the school".
Regarding support for Ukrainian students fleeing the war, Minister Valditara supported the need to ensure the educational continuity of displaced young people in the Member States. “The Ministry and every Italian school have a duty to guarantee every minor, regardless of nationality, access to educational services. It will then be a question of rebuilding an efficient school system in Ukraine, and for this reason the Minister underlined "the need for European countries to take responsibility, dividing the tasks within a systemic plan, of rebuilding Ukrainian schools". During the meeting, it emerged that the friendship between Italy and Poland extends to other areas: Minister Czarnek has in fact shown himself openly available to support Rome's candidacy for the assignment of Expo 2030.