Racibórz becomes the fifth Polish city to open a mobile school

Children can now learn from and on the street

Racibórz, a Silesian town with 54 thousand inhabitants, became the latest Polish city to acquire a Mobile School. This innovative and inclusive learning tool originating from Leuven, Belgium, has already brought education closer to the streets of Warsaw, Krakow, Bytom and Gliwice.

If your child can’t go to the classroom, the classroom will come to your child

The Mobile School is considered a particularly useful tool for youth workers, who can transform streets into learning environments and empower local communities. It consists of a mobile board with over 260 educational games, with many applications adapted to the needs of the community in question.

Through this tool, children can improve their skills in subjects such as mathematics, Polish language or their knowledge about society; they can learn to respect the rights of others, to get familiar with their own and other children's emotions and understand empathy.

A learning session with the Mobile School in Racibórz. Video: street-smart.be

In Racibórz, the Mobile School is run by the Association for the Development of Children, Youth and the Family "Helpful Hand" (originally Pomocna Dłoń). They have applied to the organisation providing the tool – mobileschool.org – and were approved two years ago.

Representatives of both organisations ensured that the educational content is suitable for the mobile school. After this verification, the Mobile School was handed over to the Association’s staff last week who will start using it in the field next spring.

The city authorities are co-financing the project in Racibórz while the larger project led by Belgian MobileSchool.org is supported by the European Union, under Erasmus +.

“After a few days of workshops, I can say that our mobile school in the backyards is a sensation. This reaction and interest of our pupils is a real reason for joy”, commented Adam Reszka from "Helpful Hand" quoted on the website of Racibórz.

In addition to the gamified learning opportunities available on the spot, the platform supports youth workers with online resources like games and a virtual learning platform for coaching and evaluation. The mobile school is considered especially effective in bringing learning opportunities to remote locations or disadvantaged communities, where kids tend to quit formal education too early or are excluded from it in general.

During the COVID-19 pandemic when many schools were forced to close and distance learning became the norm, being able to bring schooling to the very homes of these children can make a world of difference.