Education Quality and its Drivers in Rural Areas of Poland

Abstract A two-stage study was carried out. Firstly, a pioneering attempt was made to measure the quality of education in rural areas of Poland, by county (powiat), using a synthetic indicator. Secondly, the socioeconomic determinants of that quality were modelled. A strength of this study is the fact that it covers the entire population of the given type of administrative units. The analysis served to verify the hypothesis that exogenic socioeconomic factors are key to the effectiveness of the educational process in rural areas. It was shown that in Poland the theories of polarised development are more applicable than those of endogenic development. There was observed an inversely proportional effect from the centre–periphery axis on education quality, but, above all, the effect of several gravitational systems, in which there occurs exogenic diffusion of the results of economic growth and progress from the present and former provincial capitals.