🇵🇱 Krakow · Schools
Schooling and childcare in Krakow
Catchment decides your guaranteed primary place, the preschool and primary rounds open in the first week of March, and the bilingual secondary deadline closes weeks before the general one.
The thing people get wrongFor state upper-secondary schools, the bilingual schools, bilingual and international sections and courses with an aptitude test close well before everything else. In 2026 those applications shut on 1 June while the general round ran to 8 July. Those are precisely the English-language state options, and the early date is the one families miss.
Catchment is the whole primary decision
A child living inside a primary school's obwód is admitted to that school as of right, z urzędu, with no competition and no scoring. Only an application to a school outside your catchment goes through the criteria the city council sets, and those places are finite. Where you sign a lease therefore decides which state school your child is guaranteed. Check the catchment before you take the flat, not after.
The March round, and the February window before it
Admission to municipal preschools and to the first year of primary school opens on the same day in early March and runs entirely through the city's electronic system. For the 2026/2027 year both opened on 2 March 2026, preschools on the formico service and primary schools on elemento, both at rekrutacje-krakow.pzo.edu.pl. Expect the same first-week-of-March pattern each year, with the exact dates published in January. Parents whose child is already in a Kraków municipal preschool do not apply again: they file a continuation declaration in a short window that closes before the main round opens, which for 2026/2027 ran from 19 to 27 February. Miss that window and the child re-enters the general round.
The upper-secondary timetable
In Małopolska the 2026/2027 general application window ran from 18 May to 8 July 2026, with the bilingual, international and aptitude-test courses closing on 1 June. The list of qualified candidates went up on 15 July by 12:00, the place had to be confirmed by producing original certificates by 15:00 on 17 July, final admission lists appeared on 20 July by 12:00, and a supplementary round ran from 21 to 28 July. Failing to confirm by the deadline forfeits the place. The whole timetable is fixed each year by an order of the Małopolski Kurator Oświaty published at the end of January, and that order on kuratorium.krakow.pl is the authority for the coming year's dates.
The international option
British International School of Cracow is a Cambridge International School and IB World School, and has been operating for around 30 years. Monthly tuition is 4,000 zł for Foundation, 6,000 zł for Years 1 to 11 and 6,250 zł for IB1 and IB2, with a one-off registration fee of 3,000 zł, and Cambridge IGCSE and IB examination fees on top. Fees are set in złoty, fixed for the academic year, paid by bank transfer and due for the full year from 1 September to 30 June. Admission is rolling rather than deadline-driven: an enquiry and application form, a review and possibly an age-appropriate assessment or classroom observation, then an offer letter, enrolment forms and payment. The constraint is capacity in the specific year group, so ask about that year rather than about the school.
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