Ruling party announces plan to finance school trips

The governing party Law and Justice (PiS) has unveiled a project for funding educational trips for school children as part of its election campaign.

Poland goes to the polls on October 15 in an election that some have described as the most important in decades.

On Thursday, Przemyslaw Czarnek, the education minister, announced on X that next year almost 5 million young people will have an opportunity to visit the most important places in Poland under a new scheme dubbed 'School voucher - get to know Poland.'

"From the spring of next year... we will finance one and two-day trips for each class and each student in Poland," he said.

According to Czarnek, patriotic and civic education should be based on knowledge of Polish history and culture.

"To this end, we will use the educational potential of Polish museums, science centres, monuments in our cities and the beauty of the Polish countryside," he said.

Czarnek added that the scheme is "great news also for the tourism sector."

Rafal Bochenek, a PiS spokesman, told state-owned TV channel TVP Info later on Thursday that the government plans to allocate up to PLN 1 billion (EUR. 0.22 bln) for the programme, which will "relieve parents of the largest costs related to educational trips."

'School voucher' is PiS's fourth election programme proposal this week, following a plan to revitalise old prefabricated residential blocks, a scheme to improve the quality of hospital food and a project aimed at supporting local food suppliers.