Tutors pick up state-school cover. A language school loses its September timetable
On 23 August 2026 the education ministry told PAP there were 17,308 vacancies before the new school year, including 896 English posts. A private language school loses a lesson when the tutor’s hours, the group list and the instalment live in three files.
On 23 August 2026 Bankier.pl published Ministry of Education figures released through PAP. Ahead of the 2026/2027 school year, schools and education institutions listed 17,308 vacancies, equal to 11,732 full-time posts.
The largest numbers were in preschool education (1,919), teachers supporting pupils with disabilities (1,649), psychologists (1,149) and mathematics (1,019). Polish: 939. English: 896. Vocational subjects: 893.
For the owner of a language school or a private nursery those figures are not a ministry table. The same English teacher, the same preschool worker and the same psychologist also work in the private setting. In September the office builds groups, and the tutor rings to say the state school has given them cover work.
The ministry stressed that the summer is a period of staff movement and that advertised vacancies do not show the true shortage. Education Solidarity, on the first day of term, 1 September 2026, put the real gap much higher and pointed to overtime hours. That is a union estimate, not an official statistic. The private school is left with the same operational problem: the class timetable falls apart when staff have two workplaces.
Ministry figures and 556 applications from Małopolska
Ministry spokeswoman Ewelina Gorczyca told PAP that a headteacher posts a vacancy when they decide they need another teacher. No advert does not mean the school is fully staffed. It means nobody opened recruitment for that post.
The ministry also said health education need not be taught by a teacher hired only for that subject. Almost 113,000 people hold the qualifications, including biology, science, PE, family-life education and psychology teachers. In 2025/2026 nearly 23,000 teachers delivered the subject. That is reform context, not a description of a private school's day.
A harder local signal came from Małopolska. By 6 August 2026 the education authority in Kraków had received 556 applications for permission to hire a teacher without the required qualifications for 2026/2027. Most concerned support for special educational needs, school psychologists, revalidation and preschool. Permission is possible when a qualified person cannot be hired.
A private language school does not file that application. It competes for the same people on pay, a workable timetable and whether the tutor has to cancel a group because someone in the state school is off sick. A private nursery competes for carers that public recruitment is still seeking.
On 1 September Waldemar Jakubowski of education Solidarity said schools employ pensioners, that some people “even pull two full-time posts”, and that others teach in several schools. The union also said the previous school year saw more than two million overtime hours. Those figures are not a Statistics Poland release. They do describe a pattern private schools already know: the tutor is not “free on Tuesdays at 17:00”, they have a gap between cover duty in a primary school and their own group.
Example: a language school with a dozen groups
Imagine a language school in a county town. A dozen English groups, a few German ones, after-school classes for children and two evening groups for adults. There are several tutors. Some of them also teach in a state school.
The office is one person, two at most. Enrolments arrived through the website form, through Messenger and on a slip left after an open day in June. The spreadsheet has columns for name, level, weekday and instalment. A second sheet holds the tutors' timetable. Attendance is a paper list in the classroom.
In the last week of August one A2 group has seven names, another has fourteen for a cap of ten. The tutor who was down for Tuesdays and Thursdays writes that the primary school has given them cover until October and they can only do Wednesdays. A parent on the waiting list rings to ask if there is a place. Another asks why nobody confirmed the September payment.
The school is not short of goodwill. It is short of one place that shows, at the same time, who is in the group, who has paid, who is teaching and what happens when that person drops out. A shared timetable with hour clashes and a payment status next to the name would spare the calls that, in September, still run past six o'clock.
A timetable when the tutor has a second school
A state school sets its plan for the year. A private language school sets it for a term and then rewrites it through September, because groups merge, levels do not match and tutors reply late. When the same person has a contract or hours in the state system, the private timetable is what is left after the public one, not the other way round.
The clash shows up on the day. The tutor writes in the morning that they are staying on cover. The office cancels the group on Messenger, but not everyone. Someone arrives at the door. Someone else is already in the car. The hour the parent paid for is lost, or moved to another day that nobody recorded in one calendar.
With three groups a table and a phone are enough. With a dozen groups and several tutors the table lies, because nobody locks it. Two people edit the same file and a third has a July copy in an email.
A panel with a room and person calendar shows occupancy before the office confirms a new group. The tutor sees their hours. The office sees that Wednesday at 17:00 is already taken. Cover can be entered as an absence with a reason, not as a chat message that disappears. The parent is told about the cancellation from the same record the office uses to decide whether the lesson must be made up.
That does not replace the tutor's contract and does not tell them to quit the state-school post. It only organises what the private school can control: which hours have been promised to which group.
Enrolments that do not match the room
September in a language school is not the spring intake. It is the tidying of lists that lived in three places over the summer. The website form took a registration. A mother added a sibling on Instagram. A father wrote that they would “probably start in October”. A class cap exists only when someone enforces it in one register.
A group that is too small does not cover the tutor's rate. A group that is too large ruins the lesson and ends in a complaint. Schools often wait until the second week of September for it to “settle”. Settling means two groups merge, one collapses, and a parent who paid for Tuesday is offered Thursday and refuses.
A course enrolment system has a narrow job here: the seat disappears at the moment of booking, not after someone moves a row by hand. The waiting list is a queue with a date, not a margin note. The level the parent ticked is not a verdict — a placement test may change it — but the office can see how many people are waiting for A2 and how many for B1 before the tutor walks in.
In a private nursery the same jam looks different. A parent who missed a state place rings in August and September. Staff that public nurseries are still seeking have to be kept with pay and a predictable rota. Nursery and preschool software ties intake to the attendance list. A language school ties intake to the room and the tutor. The mechanism is the same: a place, a person, an hour.
An absence that breaks the hour's accounts
The tutor cancels because of cover in the primary school. A child does not come because of a test. An adult student stays at work. The language school has three kinds of absence and one spreadsheet that cannot tell them apart.
A parent expects a make-up class when the school cancelled. They do not expect a refund when the child did not attend. A tutor paid by the hour wants pay for being in the room, not for an empty list. An office that has no status for “cancelled by the school / student absent / tutor ill” reconstructs it afterwards from memory and from chat.
An attendance list on the tutor's phone closes the lesson on the day. The office can see whether the group ran. When the school cancels, the system can offer a make-up slot or log the hour for settlement. When the student is absent, there is a record, without blaming a child on a parents' chat.
Off-the-shelf language-school software usually has that list. It is enough when the process is standard: group, tutor, attendance, instalment. It stops being enough when the school also runs holiday camps, one-to-one lessons, a hybrid online offer and a company contract for staff English. Then attendance has to feed a different price list and a different invoice.
The September instalment and a group that no longer exists
Payment in a language school is rarely a single sum. A registration fee, a monthly instalment, a sibling discount, a “pay for the term” offer. In September some people pay, some promise, some wait until the group is certain to start. The office should not let a child into the room on a verbal assurance, but it often does, because the parent is a regular and “always pays by the tenth”.
When a group collapses because five people remain, the school must refund or move the student. Without a payment status on the person that is a manual dig through transfers. The payment reference may be the child's first name, the mother's surname or the word “English”. The bookkeeper matches it in the evening.
A panel in which the booking, the group and the payment share one identifier does not replace the accounts. It shows the office who may join the list and who is in arrears. The instalment reminder leaves the system, not the secretary's private phone. When a student moves between groups, the amount follows the person instead of vanishing in an old sheet.
In a private nursery the matching line is fees and meals. A parent torn between a public waiting list and a private contract still asks about cost. A setting that does not tie attendance to meal charges either loses money on every illness or processes refunds by hand. That is a separate flow, but in September it happens in the same office that is also building the afternoon English timetable.
The parent finds out too late
A cancelled lesson is a minor matter if the message arrives before the parent leaves work. It is a row if it arrives when the child is already at the door. September brings more cancellations: tutors are patching state-school timetables, children fall ill after the holidays, rooms change.
A Messenger group looks like a fast channel and is not a register. Nobody knows who read the message. Nobody knows whether the father who collects on Tuesdays is in the group. After a year the school has a dozen chats and no history it can show when a complaint arrives.
A parent app or portal with a cancellation notice and a new slot does one job: the same information reaches the people linked to the child. The tutor does not post a notice on their own. The office does not ring down a paper diary. If the school also collects consents for images and contact, those consents should not live in the same thread as a class cancellation — that is a separate article on image records in a nursery.
For adult evening groups the channel is simpler: email or text. For children in the afternoon it has to reach the parent, not the pupil. That is obvious until the number in the spreadsheet belongs to the mother and the father is the one who collects.
A spreadsheet, a ready-made product or a separate panel
Three groups, one tutor, one intake a year: a spreadsheet will do. The owner knows every student. A clash of hours is visible on paper. Buying software that costs a subscription and training time will not make September faster.
A ready-made SaaS product for language schools is reasonable when the process is typical. There are groups, levels, instalments, an attendance list and a parent login. Several such products exist. A school without an unusual price list or a second line of business usually does not need a custom application.
Integration makes sense when enrolments sit on the website, payments go through a processor and the accounts live in another programme. Then you do not build a third system; you connect two existing ones so that the payment status returns to the group list. Off-the-shelf software stops adding up when the school adds a nursery, camps, company courses and online lessons at a different rate.
A custom panel pays its way when the owner is already keeping several spreadsheets and copying the same names by hand. Or when tutors are paid in different ways: a contract, a civil-law agreement, hours taught, hours cancelled by the school. Or when the tutor's public timetable should appear as blocked slots, not as a chat message. Then a bespoke application is not a whim. It is cheaper than an office that works into the night every September.
Hours sold and the instalment already taken
The August ministry figures and Solidarity's 1 September briefing describe state education. Private language schools and private nurseries sit beside it. They hire from the same labour market of English teachers, preschool staff and psychologists. They lose September not because they missed a PAP release. They lose it when a cancelled lesson, an empty room and an unpaid instalment are three separate stories.
GESOFT builds panels for that flow when a ready-made product does not cover it. A room and tutor calendar, enrolments with a seat cap, attendance with a reason, a payment status on the student, a parent notice when a class is cancelled. A parent app is worth building when the cancellation has to arrive before the parent leaves work, not as a chat post after the fact.
That does not replace the education authority, a state-school register or the ministry vacancy list. It does not tell a tutor to leave their post. It organises the hours the private school has sold and for which it has taken an instalment.
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