Yulia bodar’s classroom was once the back bedroom of a large Warsaw apartment. Now it boasts a blackboard, a bright carpet decorated with cartoon animals, and desks at which a dozen small children are learning to write. Her pupils are refugees from Ukraine who have arrived in Poland since Russia invaded their country on February 24th. She is a newcomer herself, having fled western Ukraine with her own two children not long after the bombs began to fall.
Ms Bodar is a teacher at Materynka, a school that teaches the Ukrainian curriculum from several makeshift locations in Poland’s capital. Before the war began it had about 200 pupils, largely children of migrants who had come to Warsaw to work. Now it has around 1,000. Larysa Vychivska, one of its founders, points to a tall stack of forms filled out by newcomers. She says her school is taking in about 20 new pupils each day.