Poland: Cyfrowa szkoła (Digital School)

Date: 2012/04/03
Policy Status: Current
Language: pl
Jurisdiction: National
Country: Poland
Institution: Ministry of Educaton
Policy license: CC BY

Tags: government, education, k12

Policy Title: Polish governmental program "Cyfrowa szkoła" (Digital School) - Go to the policy
Author(s): Ministry of Education, Poland

Description: „Digital School” is the newest governmental program for computerisation of Polish schools and raising ICT competences. Pilot of the project is aimed for 380 schools in Poland, it will equip them with hardware (i.e. tablets, computers for students and additional equipment choosen by school) and granted with 80% government funding of the costs (with a 20% contribution by the local government). Program is divided into four segments: e-school (infrastructure and equipment for schools), e-teacher (teacher trainings), e-student (ICT equipment for students) and e-resources (creating open textbooks, redesign of Scholaris, the national platform for educational resources, and production of ICT tools for school management). The e-resources segment includes a free licensing provision for all content produced within the program.

Policy Comments:

The "Cyfrowa szkoła" program is the first major Polish governmental program to include free licensing rules. The policy decision to construct the program in such manner should be seen in the context of a broader policy initiative to introduce openness of content produced or funded by public institutions. Previously, several other governmental programs have included open licensing conditions, albeit at a smaller scale, or for programs not explicitly set up for content creation (for example, a cultural education grant program run by the Ministry of Culture provided preferential treatment for projects using open licensing; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs uses CC licenses in its development aid grant program).

The policy applies to two types of content to be produced within the program: textbooks and other educational content. Firstly, 18 textbooks will be produced, covering covering early integrated education (grades 1-3) and 13 basic curriculum subjects, for all levels of education (elementary, middle and high school - grades 9-12). Secondly, additional - currently unspecified - resources will be created and published at Scholaris, a national educational resources platform.

The provisions of the program include: - open licensing of all educational content produced within the program, under CC Attribution (CC BY) or another license meeting the free license definition - the resources will be made available in at least one open technical format (with its specification made available without legal or technical constraints) - for content made available online (through http / https protocol), it will be made available in line with current WCAG guidelines