Poland ( Polish : Polska ), officially the Republic of Poland ( Polish : Rzeczpospolita Polska ), is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, and the Baltic Sea, Russia (in the form of the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave ) and Lithuania to the north. It also shares a maritime border with Denmark and Sweden. The total area of Poland is 312,683 sq km (120,728 sq mi) making it the 69th largest country in the world with population over 38.5 million people concentrated mainly in large cities, including the historical capital of Poland, Kraków, and the present capital, Warsaw.

The first Polish state was born in 966, within territory very similar to the present boundaries of Poland. Poland became a kingdom in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a long association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by uniting to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth collapsed in 1795, and the Poles were without a state for 123 years. Poland regained its independence in 1918 after World War I but lost it again in World War II, emerging several years later as a communist country within the Eastern Bloc under control of the former Soviet Union. In 1989 communist rule was overthrown and Poland became what is informally known as the "Third Polish Republic". Today, as the 6th most populated member state of the European Union, Poland is a liberal democracy made up of sixteen voivodeships ( Polish : województwo ). Poland is also a member of NATO, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization.

Education in Poland starts at the age of 7 with 6 years of primary school ( Polish szkola podstawowa ). Next is the lower secondary level consists of 3 years in gymnasium ( gimnazjum ), starting at the age of 13, ends with an exam). This is followed by upper secondary level, which has several alternatives, the most common being the 3 years in High School ( liceum ) or 4 years in technikum. Both end with a maturity examination ( matura , roughly equivalent to British A-levels examination and quite similar to French baccalauréat), and may be followed by several forms of upper education, leading to licencjat or inzynier (Polish equivalents of Bachelor's degree ), magister (Polish equivalent of Master's degree ) and eventually doktor (Polish equivalent of Ph. D. degree).

Today, Poland has more than a hundred tertiary education institutions; traditional universities to be found in its major cities of Gdansk, Bydgoszcz, Katowice, Kraków, Lublin, Lódz, Bialystok, Olsztyn, Poznan, Rzeszów, Torun , Warsaw , Wroclaw and Zielona Góra as well as technical, medical, economic institutions elsewhere, employing around 61,000 workers. There are also around 300 research and development institutes, with about 10,000 more researchers. In total, there are around 91,000 scientists in Poland today.

According to a recent report by the European Commission, Poland ranks 21st on the list of EU states in the area of innovation. Conditions for knowledge creation are worsening, particularly because of a decline in business Research and development, from 0.28% of GDP in 1998 to 0.16% in 2003. Public R&D expenditures were 0.43% of GDP in 2003. The share of university R&D funded by the business sector has also declined, indicating that firms have not turned to outsourcing research to make up for declining R&D expenditures. Because of the very low levels of R&D, the process of transition of Poland to a knowledge economy is slow. For more info, see Innovation performance factsheet.