This project has received funding via the EUI Widening Programme call 2025. The EUI Widening Europe Programme initiative, backed by contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States, is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in Widening countries, and thus foster a more cohesive European Higher Education and Research area.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused an enormous inflow of refugees into Poland, including many children. About 350,000 Ukrainian school-aged children entered Polish schools, but integration is challenging, both because of the traumatic transition, difficult historical experiences, and because Polish and Ukrainian are related, but distinct, Slavic languages.
Also, older students sometimes only attend online courses offered in Ukraine. To help children with schoolwork and integration, schools can hire “cross-cultural assistants” (CCAs). CCAs have to know Polish but are not required to have a degree in pedagogy, although most used to be teachers in Ukraine before the war. However, currently, there are approximately 140 refugee pupils per CCA. Such low numbers are problematic both for children’s learning and social integration, and because they leave many Ukrainian refugee teachers outside of the school system.
Recently, the Polish government has decided to increase the number of CCAs (the objective is to have 1 CCA per 20 Ukrainian pupils), which until now were often funded irregularly by donors. This policy change, planned to be implemented as early as January 2025, offers an opportunity to study how CCAs can improve the integration of Ukrainian refugee children into Polish schools, through a collaboration between EUI researchers with researchers and stakeholders in Poland.
Furthermore, the project aims to broadly study the case of a large-scale influx of refugees from Ukraine into Poland, in order to gauge how the learning and social integration of refugee children is affected by the presence of support teachers who are themselves refugees from the same country.
For more information about the EUI Widening Europe Programme, please visit the official webpage.