Operator of STF

The Operator of the Scholarship and Training Fund is the Foundation for the Development of the Education System [1]

The Foundation’s main objective is to support reform and development of the Polish education system in the broad sense. The Foundation carries out its statutory objective through:

• operation of international cooperation programmes in the education field,

• promoting analytical and study work supporting the projected education reform, as part of programme implementation,

• programming the cooperation between Polish education facilities and foreign centres,

• undertaking an ever more extensive cooperation with Polish and foreign educational institutions and organisations.

The Foundation’s activity, which ensures a broad participation of school and college/university employees in support programmes raising the quality of education, creates a positive foundation for reforms and developing the Polish education system.
Those schemes embrace a number of EU initiatives with the priority given to:

• increased investment in human resources,
• fighting social divisions and disparities,
• supporting pursuance of knowledge,
• promoting cooperation leading to raising the quality of educational services,
• promoting the idea of life-long learning.

Those schemes support the reform planned by the Ministry of National Education, and in particular the aspiration to:

• propagate education at the secondary and university level,
• ensure equality of the education opportunities,
• integrate main education aspects: knowledge, skills and personal development of the learning at all education levels,
• compile an evaluation system and procedures for measuring students’ achievements, as well as exams enabling the comparability of the final certificates and diplomas,
• raise professional qualifications of teachers and develop a new system of occupational and salary promotion for teachers,
• extend cooperation between schools, students’ family environment and the local community,
• propagate educational schemes involving prevention and child care,
• increase professional qualifications and competencies of pedagogical supervision employees and executives managing schools and education facilities,
• increase the school autonomy.

Management of education schemes

The Foundation is engaged in the administration of the largest EU education schemes. Throughout all years of its operation, the FDES has been the sole operator of TEMPUS, a non-refundable university aid scheme in the Central and Eastern European countries. Supporting the improvement of the education quality and the enhancement of managing higher education institutions, TEMPUS was drawing among others upon the Erasmus solutions worked out since 1987. In consequence of its experience acquired while in administration of both TEMPUS and other non-refundable education aid schemes, the FDES became an institution able to prepare the ground for implementing the SOCRATES programme in Poland. And, once the European Commission decided Poland should join the group of SOCRATES participating countries, the FDES became the National Agency for the SOCRATES scheme in charge of implementing all the scheme components in our country, including Erasmus, Grundtvig and Comenius. SOCRATES was functioning in that formula until late 2006. In 2007 the Polish education authorities decided that the Foundation should become the sole central institution in charge of implementing and executing the “Life-long learning” scheme with all its sectoral schemes: Comenius, Erasmus, Grundtvig and Leonardo da Vinci.
Until the end of 2006 the Foundation was also coordinating the informal education scheme – YOUTH (since 2007: “Youth in Action”).

The Foundation runs also National Contact Points for such EU programmes as ERASMUS MUNDUS and TEMPUS, the National Bureau of the Eurodesk Programme and the Eastern Europe and Caucasus Resource Centre SALTO EECA. The Foundation is implementing in Poland the Community initiative known as European Language Label and the eTwinning action. The Foundation has also accommodated the Polish Bureau of Eurydice - an information network on education in the European countries.

Programmes implemented within the framework of FDES:

• Lifelong Learning Programme [2]
  This programme is made up of the following sub-programmes:
  
  • Comenius [3] - kindergarten and school education
  • Erasmus [4] - university education
  • Leonardo da Vinci [5] - vocational education and training
  • Grundtvig [6] - adult education
  • Study visits [7]
  • LLP preparatory visits [8]
• Youth in Action [9]
• Erasmus Mundus [10]
• TEMPUS [11]
• Eurodesk [12]
• SALTO EECA [13]
• European Language Label [14]
• eTwinning [15]
• Eurydice [16]
• Polish-Lithuanian Youth Exchange Fund [17]