Another resignation in Donald Tusk's government. Deputy Minister of Education leaves office

Deputy Minister Joanna Mucha announced on Monday that she had resigned from her position as Secretary of State at the Ministry of National Education due to the lack of support for the projects she had been working on. The head of the Ministry of National Education, Barbara Nowacka, said that the program mentioned by Mucha had to be amended and would be submitted to a government meeting.

Mucha said she had resigned from her position as secretary of state in the Ministry of National Education on Monday. "For the past few months, I have been working intensively on projects that I deeply believe could change Polish schools. Unfortunately, despite many attempts and talks, it was not possible to build support for their implementation in the MEN management and in the government. In this situation, I considered it unjustified to continue working in my current position," Mucha wrote in a statement published on the social media site.

She said she had conveyed the reasons for her decision to the Minister of Education, Barbara Nowacka. "We have also arranged a meeting in the coming days," she added.

In the afternoon, Minister Nowacka commented on the matter and thanked Mucha for her cooperation in a post on X. She also informed that "the program for local governments and schools mentioned by J. Mucha had to be urgently corrected in the Ministry of National Education and will be submitted to the Council of Ministers meeting in the coming days."

At the Ministry of National Education, Mucha was responsible for financial matters, including structural funds in the area of ​​education and upbringing, international cooperation, youth exchange, Polish and Polish education abroad, and the promotion of the Polish education system and the popularization of Polish as a foreign language abroad. She was in charge of the following departments: budget and finance, structural funds, and international cooperation. She also supervised the Institute for the Development of the Polish Language named after St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe and the Center for the Development of Polish Education Abroad.

An important field of her activities was the education of refugee children from Ukraine. She headed the Team for the Educational Integration of Children Who Are Citizens of Ukraine operating at the Ministry of National Education. She was responsible for preparing the government program for equalizing educational opportunities for children and youth from Ukraine "School for All". Elements of the program were to include financing the employment of intercultural assistants in schools, psychological support for students from Ukraine and training for teachers.

In February this year, in an interview with PAP, the then deputy minister announced that the Ministry of National Education was planning new steps regarding the teaching of Ukrainian children – an evaluation of their knowledge of the Polish language to check which children need additional language support.

After the second round of the presidential election, in which Karol Nawrocki won, the deputy head of Poland 2050 posted a lengthy entry on the social network criticizing the election campaign of Rafał Trzaskowski. In it, Mucha compared the actions of PiS and PO in the presidential campaign. She accused the Civic Platform, among other things, of not doing strategic analyses, unlike PiS.

"The Platform believes that it is 'better' and therefore there is a moral obligation to vote for Platform candidates. They believe that 'they simply deserve this victory' - this is a quote from an anonymous representative of the campaign," she wrote.

"You will soon begin the ritual search for the guilty. You, Platforma, will look for them everywhere, but not at home. Our politics have turned into a blame game. No, Szymon Hołownia is not to blame for Rafał's defeat. If he had not run, Rafał would have had an even worse result, because a large part of his electorate would have gone to Mentzen in the first round and voted for Nawrocki in the second," the MP emphasized.

On Monday, Mucha thanked the Speaker of the Sejm, leader of Poland 2050 Szymon Hołownia for his trust and the opportunity to work for education, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Minister Nowacka and the entire management of the Ministry of National Education for the opportunity to undertake this work and for a year and a half of cooperation. She noted that in matters in which she can be helpful, she remains at the disposal of the government of the Coalition on October 15.

Mucha, who is an MP and deputy head of Poland 2050, has served in her position since December 2023 in the Ministry of Education and Science, and from January 2024 in the separate Ministry of National Education.

Mucha is an economist by education, a graduate of management studies and postgraduate studies in health economics at the University of Warsaw. In 2007, she defended her doctorate in health economics at the Catholic University of Lublin. In 2002-2010, she was an assistant at the Institute of Economics of the Catholic University of Lublin. In 2011-2013, she served as the Minister of Sport and Tourism in Donald Tusk's government. She is a lecturer at SWPS University. (PAP)

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