Student rights in Poland
Due to the Bill of Education every student in Poland has lots of rights. These are framed not as things that schools have to do, but things that all students must be able to do.
When you go to school for the first time, you are automatically a member of the school council. In many schools it is felt  the youngest students, aged 7-10, don’t know so much about their role in school, but from the 4th year, they can get actively involved. Usually school councils are divided into groups dedicated to sport, culture, art, etc. where pupils can organise small projects or big events. How many groups there are depends on how many active and really involved students there are. In general students are free and able to organise competitions, awards, school parties, exhibitions or other events. Recently one of the most popular projects was installing bike racks in front of the buildings to make students able to go school using their own bicycles.
What can be an example for other countries is students’ right to choose the school council coach (coordinator) . In reality, how this works depends on internal school regulation, but only around how students choose a teacher who will be their coordinator. In some schools there are general elections and there are lots of candidates, in others students only say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for the one, who is currently in power, and usually say ‘yes’ (to be clear: they do good work).
Another right that students have is the ability to run a school newspaper. Of course now it is more popular to help IT teachers with publishing news on the school website, rather than printing papers.
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