Start of the 2026/27 school year

Happy new school year in Orzeszkowa!

There are days when it smells of fresh bread and new notebooks. Yesterday was one of those days: the Eliza Orzeszkowa Language School in London has started the 2026/2027 school year.

We welcomed our students and our female students with bread and salt, because this is how we have welcomed those we have been waiting for with impatience in Polish homes for generations. Some returned to us after the holidays, confident, greeted at the door by their classmates and colleagues. Others gained courage and took their first steps at our school so that they could say: this is my Polish school.

Then the anthem rang out. Dozens of voices, large and small alike, coalesced into a single sound that reminds us every year of why we are here.

And just as soon as that, the most important thing: the first classes in the classroom. New notebooks, still blank and smelling of paper, and the first notes, carefully written with commas and dashes in the right places. The first Polish sentences after the holidays, the laughter in the hallway, and that focus when we start another formal adventure with Polish.

We thank the parents for their trust, and our teachers and the fantastic volunteers for the heart they put into preparing this day.

May this year be good, interesting and full of Polish words for everyone.

The event was photographed by Ms. Karolina Król.