THE PLACE OF PRESCHOOL EDUCATION IN FINANCING EDUCATIONAL TASKS

The purpose of this article is to present the complexity of the processes of statutory changes which have contributed to the spread of pre-school education in Poland, and to show the financial outlays for pre-school education against the background of expenditures of local government units (hereinafter: TSU) on educational tasks. In addition, the objective is to examine the sources of funding for pre-school education from the central budget and analyze their significance in spending on this sector of education. The theoretical part outlines the general organization of pre-school education as a statutory task of the communal government resulting from the education law and the scale of its implementation. In addition, a review of the statutory changes in preschool education that have taken place over the years in the programmatic, organizational and financial areas was conducted. The subsequent part presents the general principles of financing educational tasks with a particular emphasis on preschool education.In the empirical part, based on quantitative research, the following were analyzed: current expenses of TSUs on educational tasks in sections 801 Education and rearing and 854 Educational upbringing care in relation to income from subsidies and earmarked grants, expenditure on pre-primary education in the context of expenditure on educational tasks, sources of funding for current expenditure on preschool education and their percentage of such expenditure.These analyses have been made for: all TSUs and separately for municipalities and cities with district rights, which are statutory providers of preschool education.The research was carried out using very rich databases in the resources of the Ministry of Finance, the Central Statistical Office and the Ministry of National Education (inter alia. financial reports of territorial self-government units, reports on the execution of state budget acts, information on the execution of territorial self-government units’ budgets ).The results of the research, carried out under the direction of Tomasz Wolowiec, Ph.D., Professor of the WSEI Academy, made it possible to identify unfavorable trends for TSUs in the financing of educational tasks and preschool education in particular. Expenditures on preschool education show an upward trend and occupy a significant position in the expenditures of municipalities and cities with district rights on educational tasks. The sources of preschool education funding being introduced from the state budget on an ad hoc basis are becoming less and less important in the expenditures incurred for this sector of education at a time of rapid growth.