Thousands marched in solidarity with teachers in Budapest last Friday, voicing the view that teachers' low pay is due to the authoritarian policies of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government.. \! "

Poland has a similar problem.. Many Polish teachers are thinking about changing their profession. The reason is low salaries, according to AP NEWS.

" “But, unfortunately, it is changing for the worse, so only time will tell if this year will be my last.”.

Problems in Poland's schools are on the rise: teacher shortages are on the rise, many educators and parents fear that the education system is being used to indoctrinate youth in line with the ruling party's conservative views.

Teachers' union PSZ said young teachers receive a "

The shortage of teachers could hardly be at a worse time when both countries are trying to integrate Ukrainian refugees. This is especially difficult for Poland, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian school-age refugees now live..

Nearly 200,000 Ukrainian students, most of whom do not speak Polish, have already entered Polish schools since the outbreak of the war on February 24. According to some forecasts, the total number of Ukrainian students could triple this academic year, depending on how the war develops..

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Andrzej Wyrozhembsky, director of a secondary school in the Warsaw district of Zoliborz, created two classes for 50 Ukrainian children at his school.

He said that his Ukrainian students, who arrived in the spring, were quickly picking up Polish, a sister Slavic language.. But the real problem is finding teachers, especially in physics, chemistry, computer science and even Polish..

Across Central Europe, public salaries have not kept up with the private sector, leaving teachers, nurses and others with less purchasing power.

The situation is expected to worsen as many teachers retire and fewer young people choose low-paying professions, especially as inflation soared to 16% in Poland and close to 14% in Hungary.

The country's schools are short of 20,000 teachers, according to the Polish teachers' union.. Hungary, which has a much smaller population, is short of 16,000 teachers.

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Polish Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek disputed the figures, saying the number of vacancies for teachers is around 13,000, adding that this is not a huge number compared to 700,000 teachers across the country.. He accuses the union and the political opposition of exaggerating the problem.

In Hungary, Erszebet Nagy, a committee member of the Democratic Union of Hungarian Teachers, said teachers are leaving the profession in "

" “Even if they try to teach, most of them leave within two years.”.

Hungarian trade unions also complain about the centralization of the education system in the country. Curricula, textbooks and all decisions are controlled by a central body formed in 2012 by the nationalist government of Hungary.

" — We do not have freedom of choice of textbooks. There are only two to choose from per item, and both are terrible quality.. They blocked the possibility of a free intellectual life"

Worried about the future of their children, families are turning away from public schools. New private schools are opening, but they still can't keep up with demand.

Interestingly, Ukrainian children fleeing the horrors of war in their homeland in the EU countries are surprised to find that school programs in some EU countries lag behind Ukrainian ones in some subjects by 1-2 years, and the study load is close to relaxing.

However, even in Ukrainian schools, the salaries of teachers, and in general, the financing of school education can hardly be called worthy.. Accordingly, both the qualifications of teachers and the provision of schools with modern equipment suffer..

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How many of the teachers who went abroad, fleeing Russian bombings and “liberators”, will forever say goodbye to their profession, remains to be seen.