Aleksandra Słota, a pupil of the third class of the Academic Secondary Comprehensive School of the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice, became a scholarship holder of the National Fund for Children. This is the first such success in school history. Aleksandra was among the 600 awarded pupils from all over the country.

Definitely happier
The National Children’s Fund brings together scientists, popularisers, artists, researchers, and volunteer students who share the conviction that intellectual development of young people is a fundamental issue.

- The Fund has been operating since 1983, organizing free classes for the most talented pupils from all over Poland who want to develop their passions and interests - explains Dr Małgorzata Borysławska, director of the Academic Secondary Comprehensive School of the Silesian University of Technology.

- I waited three months for the decision to join the program, when I found out I was relieved, and I felt much happier - says Aleksandra Słota. The fund, despite its name, does not offer typical financial support. Scholarship holders have the opportunity to participate in workshops, camps, scientific internships, and humanities meetings organized by various institutes, such as the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw, or the Centre for New Technologies of the University of Warsaw. It is worth mentioning that preparing for classes requires a lot of work and self-denial, e.g. in searching for solutions to qualifying tasks or reading literature for humanistic meetings. In the database of the fund, we also have access to e-mail addresses and telephone numbers for tutors, i.e. scientists, PhD students and students. This gives us the opportunity to private consultations and help in working on a given issue.

The recruitment of potential scholarship holders takes place every spring. Interestingly, its most important part is not to give an average rating - it should not even be given.

What interests the fund the most is our interests and how we develop them. It is not just about participation and achievements in competitions and Olympics, but about, for example, a self-written research work in biology, made and developed observations of the night sky or a list of books read in philosophy or economics. There are support questions on the program page, but you can always add something from yourself. I learned about the program completely by accident, looking for information about the fields of study offered by universities – says the ALO (Academic Secondary Comprehensive School) pupil.

The first such success
The award that Aleksandra received is also a big deal for our school. She is the first person in the history of the school to have such success.

- In our daily work with students we realize the mission of the school, which is included in the statement "Lyceum as a university study". In this case, “studies,” in the broader sense, refer to individual research that our gifted young people often undertake. We are very happy that our pupil has become a scholarship holder of the fund. Ola participates in the school in the work of scientific circles in mathematics and physics. She recently participated in an international mathematical competition in the Czech Republic, where she took eighth place in her age category. Last school year, being in the second grade of the secondary school, she prepared a scientific paper for the prestigious “Physical Paths” competition, in which she received an award – sums up Dr Małgorzata Borysławska. - In academic secondary comprehensive school, we not only create space for developing the passions and talents of young people, but also, we strive to support the independence and independence of our students in these endeavours. Therefore, every success achieved outside the school environment is important to us and confirms the correctness of our mission and its implementation.

She loves poetry and literature every day. She also plays tennis. At school she is interested in physics and mathematics.

- Recently I have been dealing with problems connecting these two areas, for example I was looking for approximations of the dependence of pressure on altitude, which combines physical interpretation of the phenomenon and numerical methods used for approximations - says Aleksandra. I like to look for bigger ideas behind words and seemingly small events. If they are bigger, shouldn’t they be obvious? I think that mathematics, physics, and literature have a lot in common, they require analytical thinking, the ability to change one’s approach to a problem and not to stop working after failing to understand it and focus on the details, while not forgetting the general.