The impact of the PISA study on Polish education policy has been significant, but probably different from any other country. Poland has not experienced the so‐called ‘PISA shock’, but its education system has been benefiting considerably from PISA. For experts and policy makers, it has been a useful and reliable instrument that has made it possible to measure the effects of consecutive reforms of the school education system. Moreover, PISA and other international studies have influenced the perception of education policy in Poland. The latter has shifted from an ideology‐driven, centralised policy to an evidence‐informed policy, developed with the involvement of multiple stakeholders, although this has mostly affected the thinking of experts and policy makers rather than the general public. The new government (in power from 2015), following public opinion polls, has reversed most of the previous education reforms, eliminating lower secondary schools introduced in 1999.
We analyze the election data from the first “almost free” political contest in the Eastern bloc, the Polish election of June 1989. Voting data for state socialist societies provide a novel source of information on the political transitions in process in East Central Europe; the source of electoral support for opposition candidates in Poland affords a glimpse of the emerging political groups that must deal with continuing economic crises while attempting to reconstruct or consolidate democratic procedures. Data on turnout and on the ecological patterning of votes for Solidarność and for the government coalition are reviewed. Electoral victory has transformed Solidarność from an opposition movement with strong trade union roots to a political coalition with a rather different constituency: the strongest relative support for Solidarność candidates was found in rural areas, particularly in the southeast, rather than in the urban, industrial centers where the movement was born.
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