The student rights advocates, according to the recently proposed Act by the Ministry of National Education, would operate on respective levels – school, municipal, county, provincial and national. The first 3 instances would be optional, if the school, the municipality or the region wanted to..
A school spokesperson would be direct contact for students struggling to violate their rights.
According to the Legalis website, "It would be intended to monitor compliance with rights in a peculiar school or facility, to disseminate cognition of student rights and obligations, to support members of the school community and to accept complaints about violations of student rights". They would be handled by provincial spokespersons, coordinating and supervising matters in the voivodship. The highest institution would be the national student rights spokesperson.
Where did the thought of setting up a student advocate come from?
On 8 April 2026, the Council of Ministers adopted the bill on student rights and obligations. The provisions of this paper were as follows: ‘Transfer the catalogues of rights and duties of the student to the statutory level’. Why is it so important?
At this point, papers clarifying the rights and obligations of the student (such as school statutes) are dispersed and inconsistent and frequently controversial. On the website of the Association of the Dead Statues, we read about specified provisions in the statutes as: the ban on bringing cards to school, the “no vulnerability to feelings and your sexuality” (whatever that means), or the granting of negative points for not utilizing the school library.
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The law would besides regulate the situation of adult students who should be able to decide for themselves. However, they are frequently treated as completely dependent on legal guardians, especially in terms of justifying absence and controlling access to assessments.
Before the bill was introduced, a public consultation was conducted among students and teachers through the Integrated Educational Platform. The vast majority of respondents, both groups, advocated or had no opinion.
The bill would seem to have an easy way ahead of it, given the public support and affirmative consequence seen in the survey in the Council of Ministers and then in the Sejm, which he passed Act of 29 May 2026 (with any compromise changes, e.g. changing the work to appoint a school spokesperson to be optional).
But then the steps appeared in the form of the President's veto of July 2 – this time without any consultation or dialog with any student organization, specified as the Cogutorium (a society that defends the rights of students and students – ed.) or the Polish Council of Youth Organizations. This shows how students are treated and how frequently they are spoken of without them. Karol Nawrocki voiced the paranoia prevailing in any teaching environments, calling the student rights spokesmen: “the school prosecutor from tracking down anonymous tips” and blocking the bill.
What's the interest?
The bill proved to be highly controversial. Innumerable articles on mistitled titles appear online, but they contain any truth: “Learning against the Law on the Rights of the Student. ZNP, Directors and Solidarity want veto of the President", "Teachers oppose, but MEN has their plans" or "Teachers do not want a Student Rights Spokesman". Where does specified opposition come from among the teaching staff?
The feeling that is most disheartening in the statements against introducing student rights advocates in schools is fear.
"Instead of an educational community based on relationship, work and cooperation, [the Act] creates a school model based on procedures, complaints, appeals and permanent, paralysing actions of formal dispute. It turns the school's lifespace into a kingdom of claims and accusations," says the National Association of Educational Management. However, there are a fewer things to pay attention to.
Is specified a consequence justified?
First, and possibly not most important, the school is not only a educational community, but besides (and above all) educational. Secondly, the vocabulary utilized by the association’s representatives shows a large deal of suspicion towards the students and their representatives. It is referred to as: "complainations", "claims" and "accusations", and this sinister speech is very common among opponents of the bill.
Some teachers, reasoning of student rights advocates, imagine excessive levels of supervision and control and a wave of false accusations.
This may come from individual experiences, or possibly it is simply a symptom of a "we versus them" attitude, which, unfortunately, is rather common among the teaching staff. However, it should be pointed out that there are no statistic that would show whether false accusations of teachers are frequent and are a real problem, whether they are just a blown-up scary story.
Mentally and anecdotally, I can only say (as individual who has been a student and is simply a teacher) that if students are treated honestly, they will usually not bother anyone with their lives. I am besides very suspicious of anyone who feels threatened by attempts to facilitate the reporting of harassment and unfair treatment.
Let us remind you, students are mostly children. Moreover, in the student-teacher relationship, the erstwhile is in the position of power. If individual lives in fear of children over whom he has the advantage of age, experience, authority (if he has earned one) and influence in school, then I have the impression that he suffers from unreasonable fear or cannot gain respect from his students, or knows that he can be accused of their mistreatment due to the fact that he is actually allowed.
In addition to fear of possible harm on the part of the subjects, there is besides fear of losing power and weakening the position of a teacher at school. For example, the Local Government Portal website talks about “the dictatorship of students”. In the eyes of any adults, all manifestation of decision-making and self-determination of young people will be an attack on authority, which suggests to me that any of the students are incapable to make authority with their merit, skills, cognition or character (and this is essential if they want to work as teachers) and so feel insecure in relation to the students.
The opposition to student same - determination is besides shown in Ordo Juris’s words: “This will make schools limited in their ability to establish basic principles, specified as student clothing. At the level of the bill, the student's right to form his own appearance, for example, to come to school in colored hair, with earrings in different parts of his face or tattoos. This is to apply to both public and private schools – including Catholic schools.”
God forbid that a student (who may be an adult) can decide his appearance in a way that does no harm to anyone (and so besides in Catholic schools). As summarised by its legal analysis of this phenomenon, the Association of the Dead Statues in Report from 2023 [non-governmental organisation acting for the rights of the student and the regulation of law in schools – ed.]: ‘In a democratic legal state, it is unacceptable that the school's statutes prohibit students from dyeing their hair, wearing earrings or makeup’.
Another manifestation of a very disturbing thought about students is doubts about the content of the Act, raised by the Teachers' Voice: “The dominance of rights over duties and the alternatively modest scope of possible penalties were highlighted.” It is hard to realize this attitude another than the unusual desire for punishment and repression. It is amazing that anyone dared to say those words out loud. It is virtually impossible to mention to the rights of a student through specified authoritarian environments if the conversation "rights dominate duties" or simply does not mention obligations at the same time. It is for this reason that the proposed bill bears the bizarre title "Law on the Rights and Obligations of the Student".
As Krzysztof Maj noted in his video, lecturer of AGH in Krakow and youtuber: “We do not have the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and Obligations. I besides uncertainty that during the communist revolution workers would enter the barricades and say, “We want to be advocates for the duties of workers”. Everyone understands that workers have their responsibilities and we just don't focus on it at a time like this. That's not what a spokesperson is for. For a change, in the context of students, dialog is frequently killed, thus diverting attention from their rights.
Without school advice, there are no public schools Bogusław Sliwiski
Another maneuver of mumbling in discourse is the conflict cry: “And the spokesperson for the rights of the teacher?”. First of all, a teacher's under-card worker is covered by the same protection as a state authoritative (and this, although it did not kill general paranoia from being attacked or accused by students, should give any sense of security). Let us besides remind that the teacher is in a position of advantage and is higher in the school hierarchy than the student. Secondly, for example, would any employer, proceeding about trade unions or the State Labour Inspection, resent the deficiency of a akin body protecting the interests and rights of the employer? They most likely are, but you gotta admit, they sound ridiculous.
However, there are valuable points in the crowd of statements that simply exposure hostile and unhealthy attitudes toward students. For example, the actual problem may be the deficiency of backing of student rights spokespersons at school, municipal and region level.
Such a position would clearly entail additional responsibilities for educational workers, for which a legal addition to the wage should be guaranteed – as the provincial spokespersons and the national spokesperson would be financed. The Ministry of National Education replied in consequence to the criticism of specified a solution: "The hazard is that part of the existing student self-government guardians will not want to proceed this function in the face of an increase in the dimension of tasks without mandatory and guaranteed remuneration for this intent is tiny and does not pose major risks to the implementation of the bill in schools and educational institutions". However, it seems that the designers have misjudged the moods in the teaching environment – ZNP says on Facebook: "The problem is that no money is foreseen for fresh responsibilities".
Another understandable consequence is to uncertainty whether the student’s rights spokesmen would actually be needed.
Urszula Woźniak, Vice president of the Union of Polish Teachership, said: “We always felt that the institution of the Ombudsman was unnecessary, that is what another institutions are: the Ombudsman, the Ombudsman.” True, there are already people who are tasked with protecting student rights. The question is whether the current legal apparatus is sufficient, given the many violations of the student's rights, frequently without any consequences for the breakers. Krzysztof Maj, after quoting the study of the Association of the Dead Statues of 2023 on violations of the rights of students, commented: "If the regulation of law is not working, it is hard to wonder that various student organizations began to associate and act to combat specified pathology".
And the survey shows that the regulation of law is not working. We can read in the study that: "There is frequent violations in schools of the right of pupils to a maximum number of tests per week", "39% of respondents responded that they met [punishment of students with out-of-statute penalties]" or "Statutory regulations on non-classification rules are illegal in 3 cases out of four". In 48% of cases, the school regulates the appearance of students. And it is not only the statutes that are the culprits here, we see in the study how many teachers have behind their ears. More than 1⁄3 respondents met with ridicule from the teacher, 28% declared cases of misappropriation, nearly 43% of the respondents felt ignored, and almost 65% of the students disagreed with the message that "Number of homework and tests allows students to spend time on recreation". And nothing is done about it. Not due to the fact that these cases are not reported. In the study on the activities of the Ombudsman for the Rights of the Child We can read that: "From 2020 to 2023, the yearly impact of correspondence from citizens and institutions to the Ombudsman remained unchangeable at around 40 000. In 2020 it was 38,458, in 2021 – 40,674, in 2022 – 38,471, and in 2023 – 42,429. And we're talking about just 1 of the bodies that works for the students. So possibly a network of student rights spokesmen would be useful.
MEN Plenipotentiary on student rights and obligations. What's next?
The answer of the Ministry of National Education to the President's veto was to resume efforts, but with a change of approach.
Minister Barbara Nowack announced with a small malice: “I will not make another bill due to the fact that it is clear that no 1 reads, understands there, so we will prepare it in specified a way that it is effective and that the spokespersons actually function.” The plan was to enter into force by the beginning of the fresh school year.
Regardless of the plans, possibly this time we can implement this idea, for which so many student organizations are advocated, and which would actually work not against teachers, but for students (and yes, it does not exclude each other). And in education, it's about students.
Finally, on October 1, 2026, a MEN Plenipotentiary on the Rights and Obligations of Students was appointed to act as a circumstantial ‘replacement’ for the rights of students.
This position was taken by Nicolaus Wolanin, PhD student of the law of the University of Warsaw. "When I started my occupation at MEN, we promised that there would be a student rights spokesperson. A bill was prepared, for reasons completely incomprehensible by the President. However, what does not relieve us of our work to meet our obligations towards students and the full educational environment," said Minister Barbara Nowacka. This improvement gives hope for a real dialog with students and for improving their situation.
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