Systemic Discrimination Against Polish Education

The European Foundation of Human Rights (EFHR), established in Lithuania in 2010 to monitor the rights of national minorities in our country (in particular the Polish minority), has presented to the public a comprehensive Report on the reorganization of Polish schools in the Trakai district by the local authorities. The main purpose of the document is to present the origins and objectives of the abuse of municipal authority by the district mayor and Council in restructuring the network of Polish-language schools in the district.

The Report was prepared after legal avenues in Lithuania concerning the status and rank of Polish educational institutions – the Longinas Komołowski Gymnasium in Paluknys and the Andrzej Stelmachowski Primary School in Senieji Trakai – had been exhausted. The compilation contains detailed documentation produced between 2022 and 2026 as a result of legal and administrative disputes between the institutions and the municipal leadership, which pushed through a reform harmful to Polish education in the Trakai district. The document also presents detailed statistics on both the number of students at the aforementioned schools compared with analogous statistics for Lithuanian schools in the same localities, as well as the sources and amounts of their funding. In Paluknys, the same building houses not only the Polish gymnasium but also the Lithuanian Medeina Gymnasium. The renovation of the building, incidentally, was financed in the largest part (450,000 euros) from funds of the Polish Community (Wspólnota Polska) organization. Thanks to this, the rural school was able to transform – in terms of appearance, learning conditions, and educational facilities – into a modern educational institution meeting European standards.

As part of a broader analysis, the Report also presents the situation of several other Lithuanian-language educational institutions operating in the district in a demographic situation very similar to that of the Polish schools (including the institution in Adutiškis). This comparative analysis is valuable because it clearly illustrates how the district mayor and local Council carried out the reorganization (including solving problems related to a lack of students) at individual schools depending on their language of instruction. A detailed, fact- and figure-based study showed that the mayor, with the support of a majority in the Council, treated schools differently depending on their language of instruction. During the reorganization, Polish schools were downgraded to a lower status and stripped of their legal independence by being attached to other educational institutions located in other localities within the district. In this way, the Longinas Komołowski Gymnasium in Paluknys lost its gymnasium status, was downgraded to a lower-level educational institution, and was administratively attached to the Polish Henryk Sienkiewicz Gymnasium in Lentvaris. This happened despite strong opposition from the gymnasium’s council, parents, and the local community in Paluknys, who pointed to the risk of rapid cultural impoverishment of their locality as a result of the actions of the mayor and local authorities. The gymnasium was also forbidden from forming grades 11–12, even against the opinion of the Ministry of Education’s leadership at the time. Under similar circumstances, the Andrzej Stelmachowski Primary School in Senieji Trakai lost its legal status. The school ceased to be an autonomous educational institution, as – against its wishes – it was attached to the Lithuanian-Polish Gymnasium in Trakai, becoming a branch of that gymnasium.

Meanwhile, the Medeina Gymnasium in Paluknys, which found itself in essentially the same demographic situation, retained its status and was not reorganized. The Trakai municipal authorities applied a so-called flexible mode of operation to the Lithuanian gymnasium, allowing grades 11–12, which did not meet the required student numbers, to exist and function within the gymnasium building while formally being registered under the Lithuanian gymnasium in Rūdiškės. The municipal authorities showed a similar flexibility toward the Lithuanian institution in Adutiškis – the Donatas Malinauskas Gymnasium – allowing it to maintain its older grades despite insufficient student numbers. Funding for these classes was arranged through targeted municipal subsidies. An in-depth analysis by the Report’s experts showed that the differentiated treatment of individual educational institutions depending on their language of instruction, favoring schools with Lithuanian as the language of instruction, was not accidental. It is a systemic and planned action by the mayor and the district’s education authorities, bearing signs of discrimination and national segregation against the Polish minority, which is concentrated in specific areas of the Trakai district. Such actions will result in the impoverishment of Polish culture in individual localities within the district and in restricted access to Polish-language education there. The EFHR Report treats this as an example of systemic discrimination in access to education in one’s native language for representatives of national minorities. The Report meticulously documents the letters, complaints, and court applications through which the local Polish community attempted to oppose the mayor’s and municipality’s discriminatory practices. However, its letters and complaints were either ignored or mishandled by the Trakai municipal authorities. Moreover, the municipality even resorted to practices of artificially blocking enrollment at Polish educational institutions. Ultimately, after years of proceedings, the courts in Lithuania also sided with the municipality, accepting the worse treatment by local authorities of Polish-language schools compared to Lithuanian schools.

In the final part of the Report, its authors cite national legal acts (the Law on National Minorities, the Law on Education) as well as international ones (the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities) that the Trakai municipal authorities violated by treating Polish-language schools unequally in relation to schools with the state language of instruction. The Report concludes with an appeal for the immediate implementation of corrective measures in cooperation with the interested local communities that cultivate the Polish language and culture.

“The above practices constitute not only a violation of the constitutional principle of equality before the law and of statutory provisions, but also directly infringe upon the human rights protection standards established by the Council of Europe, including the provisions of the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Convention on Human Rights,” reads the Report’s concluding remarks. The Report has been submitted to all the highest authorities of the Republic of Lithuania and the Republic of Poland, and will subsequently also be forwarded to European institutions.

To sum up, one can only agree with the main theses put forward in the Report, which speak of systemic discrimination against the Polish national minority in the Trakai district with regard to the right to equal access to education in one’s native language. Such oppressive actions could, in the near future, result not only in a reduction of that community, but in its complete disappearance. The mayor and the ruling majority in Trakai have calculated very well that, given the difficult demographic situation, competing educational institutions in the same locality – Polish and Lithuanian – are competing for the same students: children from predominantly Polish families living, for example, in Paluknys or Senieji Trakai. Realizing that there are not enough children for two institutions, they decided to strike at Polish schools in a discriminatory manner in order to eliminate competition for Lithuanian schools. This has nothing to do with the principles of a democratic state governed by the rule of law, nor with Lithuania’s international obligations undertaken by signing and ratifying the treaties cited in the Report.

Tadeusz Andrzejewski,
Member of Vilnius District Council