What strikes a Pole when he comes into contact with international and prestigious education systems? Seemingly old-fashioned methods for learning and testing knowledge: spoken and written essays, universally called essays in the age of globalization.

– The academic year is divided into three terms, each term lasts eight weeks. Every week I write an essay and then I have a meeting with the professor. We talk – sometimes about the dissertation, sometimes more casually, about what I’m doing and what I’m learning. No one tests my knowledge – when I write about a certain topic, it’s obvious that I have it – says Łukasz Gwóźdź, who has just started his second year of law school at Oxford. – Constantly practicing writing, being confronted with analysis and criticism of what I write, with the need to defend my own theses, is something that the Polish study model often places too little emphasis on. .

He obtained the International Baccalaureate, or IB for International Baccalaureate, at Batory high school in Warsaw. Last year there were about a thousand ajbiks, as they call themselves, across the country. This one is similar. Their number has been constantly increasing since the first exam, organized in 1995 at the XXXIII high school in Warsaw. Copernicus and the 3rd secondary school. Marine in Gdynia. The preparation of students for the International Baccalaureate program began in both schools in 1993, which is why we are celebrating its 25th anniversary in Poland this year (on this occasion, President Andrzej Duda visited the Gdynia high school on September 1) . During this period, Poland has 44 schools where you can take the IB maturity exam, 20 of which are public high schools. Compared to other countries, this is a lot.

After the International Baccalaureate, you can also study in Poland, but these are less common choices. You can also apply to most foreign universities with a national high school leaving exam, but it’s a longer and more complicated path.

Original title of the text: “Lures for ajbik”