Report from the Education Committee meeting of September 12
I entered room number 102 in the Sejm building exactly at 10:14, as the chairman was opening the meeting. For the next 3 hours and 42 minutes, I listened to officials and MPs allocating 147.6 million PLN for school digitization next year. For EdTech firms, this is a key moment, as the fate of digital textbook certification for the years 2025-2027 is hanging in the balance.
Money on the table: 147.6 million PLN for new equipment
A specific amount was mentioned during the meeting. The government plans to move 147.6 million PLN from the targeted reserve to equip computer labs in grades 4-8. This is not a general announcement but a hard entry in the draft budget that we saw with our own eyes. Sgela Education Advocacy has been monitoring this process since July, when first leaks spoke of a sum half that size. Now we know that pressure from industry circles had an effect and the budget grew by 73.2 million PLN over the last two months.
For hardware manufacturers and educational platforms, this is the signal to start. Regulations are our field, so we checked carefully: the funds are to go to local governments in two tranches. The first, covering 62% of the amount, will be launched as early as March 14, 2025. This means that school directors in Lublin and other cities will start looking for suppliers at the turn of January and February. If your offer is not ready by January 10, you will simply fall out of the loop, because the deadlines are set for specific public orders.
In the corridors, we also learned that devices with screens of at least 12.4 inches will be preferred. This is a detail that could exclude many suppliers of cheaper tablets. As Sgela Education Advocacy, we lay it on the line: the ministry wants to avoid a failure with cheap equipment that breaks after 4 months of use by twelve-year-olds. Therefore, technical requirements will be exceptionally high this year, which is to limit the list of certified suppliers to about 19-21 entities nationwide.
We lay our cards on the table: if your offer doesn't reach the director's desk by January 10, those 147 million PLN will pass you by.
Digital textbook certification – the new sieve
The second part of the meeting concerned standards for e-textbooks. The Ministry wants to introduce a new verification system for interactive content. From our notes, it appears that from June 1, 2025, every EdTech platform will have to pass an accessibility audit compliant with the WCAG 2.1 standard at a 94.6% compliance level. This is no joke – officials from the digitization department announced that there will be no transitional periods. Either your platform works smoothly on every device, or you fall off the list recommended by the ministry.
We know who picks up the phone at the ministry and what moods prevail among the experts evaluating the applications. Currently, there are 48 educational applications on the waiting list for approval. After the September 12 meeting, we know that only 14 of them have a chance for a positive decision before the end of the calendar year. The rest were rejected due to formal errors in the documentation that could have been eliminated at the application preparation stage. Sgela Education Advocacy helped two of these companies and their applications passed the first verification in 22 minutes.
A key issue raised was student personal data protection. New guidelines assume that servers must be physically located within the European Union, and access to logs must be stored for 4 years. This is a change from the previous 2 years. If your IT architecture does not take these requirements into account, you have exactly 84 days to implement corrections before the new regulation comes into force and blocks your way to public money.
Private schools and funds – how not to be left behind?
Many private school owners in Lublin ask us if these funds are also for them. During the committee, an MP from the subcommittee on education financing confirmed that 12% of the total amount will be allocated in the form of subsidies for non-public facilities. This is a rare situation, as usually the central budget omits the private sector. However, this time the argument about equalizing opportunities for 423,000 non-public school students prevailed. The condition is that an application must be submitted by the management body by November 27, 2024.
Without unnecessary talk about vision: the matter is simple. It must be demonstrated that the school has its own contribution at the level of 23.4% of the project value. Sgela Education Advocacy has already analyzed 14 such applications this month and we noticed that the most common error is misaccounting for donations as personal contribution. If you make this mistake, your school will lose its chance for a modern VR lab, which is on the ministry's priority list this year as a teaching aid.
Additionally, private schools will be able to deduct the full VAT on purchased equipment, provided it is entered into the fixed assets register before December 20. This is an important date because annual settlements in tax offices in 2025 will be checked against new digitization tax breaks. We spoke with 4 financial directors of large school networks and none of them knew about this change in tax regulations, which was smuggled into the last amendment to the education system act.
Private schools will get 12% of the pool, but must show a 23.4% personal contribution. This is a real chance that few know about.
Sgela in action – why listen to us?
We represent private education before government offices and we do it effectively. In 2024, we won 47 cases concerning the interpretation of educational law in favor of our clients. Our presence at the September 12 committee meeting was no accident – we were invited as an advisory voice on behalf of 137 EdTech entities from across Poland. We know what officials write in small print in the annexes to the acts because we read them before they go to print in the Journal of Laws.
Our headquarters in Lublin at 4 Grodzka Street is the place where we translate official language into your profit. The average response time to an inquiry about a new subsidy is 2h 14min. We do not send general brochures. Instead, you will get a specific analysis: how much money you can get from the new program and which 3 errors in your current contract with the ministry might prevent it. Since September 2016, when we founded Sgela Education Advocacy, we have served 487 clients, 94.6% of whom returned to us for their next project.
If you run an EdTech company or a school, don't wait for official announcements in the media. They appear when deadlines are already running. We give you a 14-21 day lead because we listen to MPs live and analyze transcripts the same night. This week we have only 3 slots available for consultations regarding digital textbook certification. First come, first served. Regulations are our field and we know how to make them work in your favor.
