School-leaving exam

The requirement necessary to be accepted at a university was passing the school-leaving exam. However, women were not allowed to take it. Neither gymnasiums for women nor teachers’ seminaries, which the majority of our protagonists graduated from, ended with the school-leaving exam.

The first women on the Polish soil who could sit the exam were students in Cracow. They were allowed to take it at the gymnasiums for men. Women in the Wielkopolska Region had to wait till 1908 to be able to take the exam.

However, these schools offered women only an opportunity to take the exam. The knowledge necessary to pass it, had to be gained on one’s own. Hence they took part in various courses, went to finishing schools and found private tutors.

Women who could not prove their readiness for higher education were sometimes given the status of auditing students. They could listen to the lectures. However, they were frequently denied access to the labs and not allowed to get a diploma.

In 1913 the Society for Academic Lectures was established in Poznań. It provided an opportunity to fill the gaps in education in order to go to a university. One of the lecturers at the Society was Ludwika Dobrzyńska-Rybicka.

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Bożena Stelmachowska

Her biography shows how complicated the path to higher education was. She received secondary education in 1901-1908 at an underground school. It was run by Father Kazimierz Maliński, who was an activist and a proponent of Polishness, famous in the region. In the following years Stelmachowska became an underground education lecturer herself. She was allowed to participate in lectures organised by the Society for Academic Lectures as an auditing student. She became a university student in 1919 – the year when the University of Poznań opened.

Photo:

Page with ads for schools for girls from a magazine for women Bluszcz, 1909