Constitutional Court released a safeguard resolution on an highly left-wing regulation, Minister of National Education, Barbara Nowacka. It's an attack on teaching religion in schools. The Constitutional Tribunal suspended the application of this act until it gave a full ruling. According to the applicant, the provisions proposed by Nowacka agree with constitutional laws and violate the principles of concordat.
TK blocked controversial changes in Polish education. The president of the ultimate Court, Małgorzata Manowska, appealed to the Constitutional Court the July MEN Regulation on the conditions for organizing spiritual lessons. Among another things, she accused the regulation of violating the rule of regulating relations between the state and the churches to date and preventing the teaching of religion in a circumstantial curriculum of this subject, in connection with the creation of the basis for organizing the teaching of religion in inter-branch or inter-class groups.
Yesterday, on August 29, the Court approved the motion and the president of the ultimate Court issued a safeguard order. He suspended application of the Regulation until the applicable ruling was given.
In a conversation with PAP, Minister of Education Barbara Nowacka said that the Polish state is obliged to organize spiritual lessons, while how these lessons are organized depends on the decision of the Minister of Education. erstwhile asked how she reads the decision to appeal to the MEN's TK, she replied: “I read it as a scandal they want to cause”.
The Manowska President's proposal for a regulation of 26 July amending the conditions and manner of organising the learning of religion in public kindergartens and schools was issued in consequence to the fresh petitions of the Bureau of the Episcopate and the Polish Ecumenical Council.
According to the authors of these petitions, the Minister of Education has limited himself to enabling representatives of the churches and another associations afraid to express their views, while Article 12(2) of the Law on the Education strategy requires the minister liable to act “in consultation with the authorities of the Catholic Church and the Polish Autokephalist Orthodox Church and another churches and spiritual associations” by issuing a regulation setting out the conditions and manner of organizing the teaching of religion.
– Teaching Catholic religion should be carried out in accordance with a program developed by church authority. It is crucial that the programs developed in this mode supply separate content for each level of teaching, i.e. for each class.
Teaching in interclass groups will by nature be a teaching that is carried out differently than was planned in programs developed by the ecclesiastical authorities. This constitutes a violation of Article 12(2) of the Concordat between the Holy See and the Republic of Poland. – said the Episcopal spokesperson Fr Leszek Gęsiak.
As president Manowska noted in the explanatory memorandum on the SN website of the application to the TK, “There is no uncertainty that the fresh conditions and the way in which public kindergartens and schools implement spiritual education have been determined by the Minister for Education and Education in a unilateral way, without reaching consensus with spiritual unions.”
“The consequence of the changes introduced by the contested rules may be that the teaching of religion will take place in groups each year recomposed, with unknown students from another classes and branches and under-ordered content” – indicated in this justification.
“It should be considered that the provisions of the Regulation do not sufficiently respect the constitutionally guaranteed right of parents to find the directions of education and spiritual teaching of their children. In addition, the deadline for changes makes it impossible to prepare curricula and textbooks suitable for this kind of educational experiment, not yet known in the Polish education system" – emphasised Manowska.
At the same time, the First president of the Court of First Instance asked the Constitutional Tribunal for safety by suspending the application of the regulation, given that the contested regulation was to enter into force on 1 September.
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