Not all school children from families in a difficult financial and life situation received support as part of the Programme. Initially the group of eligible persons was very small. At the same time local governments and schools ineffectively informed citizens of potential aid and, additionally, made the application process very bureaucratised.
MEN defined the Programme assumptions and its planned results based on diagnosed social needs. In the audited period the Programme implementation did not bring desired effects nationwide, though. Only 60 and 67 percent of eligible school children (332 and 386 thousand respectively) received help in 2012 and 2013. About 55 percent of the amount intended for that purpose was used in the years covered by the audit.
NIK audit in Świętokrzyskie Province revealed excessive bureaucracy which hampered the Programme implementation. Requirements concerning documentation of a family’s financial and life situation were too specific. Also, a school child’s parents had to meet more than one criterion to receive help. Due to a short deadline for placing requests many parents did not manage to gather all required documents. For the same reason teachers could not fully diagnose the families’ situation. Large families or the ones in a difficult position used the support to a small extent only. Local governments did not take sufficient efforts to help them apply for funds available as part of the Programme. The audited municipalities did not use all possibilities to communicate the principles of providing aid. They failed to inform all eligible persons, including large families and disabled school children, of the ways of requesting financial support.
The aid was less effective nationwide also due to the solutions adopted in the government Programme which considered some pupils as non-eligible. For instance, the Programme for 2012 limited the possibility of providing help to first graders from primary schools who originated from richer families with several children. The Programme also did not include some children from first grades of upper secondary vocational schools run by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Minister of Environment and the Minister of National Defence.
The Programme did not guarantee effective aid for the youth from vocational schools as it did not provide for reimbursement of the costs of textbooks for vocational training. Not all families in a difficult situation could use the subsidy. For instance, children with impaired hearing, with physical disability and autistic children, including the ones with Asperger syndrome, could not benefit from the Programme. Some funds intended for that purpose were not used as the market did not offer many textbooks for disabled school children, especially for the ones with mild mental impairment and pupils with impaired hearing.
Every year, though, the Ministry of National Education improved the government programme ”School starter kit”. NIK confirms that most changes made the Programme more effective and helped increase the number of recipients:
- the basis for income calculation was increased (now first graders with higher income can benefit from the Programme),
- school children with moderate and severe mental impairment were included in the Programme for 2013 and subsidy levels were differentiated depending on the type of textbooks selected for these pupils,
- subsidies for textbooks for all school children were increased which enabled reimbursement of most expenditures incurred for the purchase of textbooks for general education.
The Programme was highly rated by the teachers surveyed in the audited schools in Świętokrzyskie Province as the number of school children who received textbooks increased. At the same time, the pupils’ parents covered by the survey mentioned some problems in applying for financial aid: short deadlines for submitting requests, difficulties to fill in forms, complicated procedures and need to wait for the refund of textbooks’ costs.
In the audited period, the Ministry of National Education effectively provided funds for the Programme implementation. In the years 2012-2013, funds were released in the amount sufficient to satisfy needs reported by the province governors and ministries running the schools. The subsidy was awarded to municipalities and schools in the amount and within deadlines set out in the Programme.
