General legal position of an individual in terms of education is shaped by the norms of constitutional weight. Among them a special place is taken up by the principle of equal access to education, which is one of the guarantees of the right to education. In the author’s opinion, the above mentioned principle has a close relation to educational diagnostics, especially its normalized part, which is didactic measurement. Therefore, an extralegal element, which is the measurement (of its quality), has a significant influence on the legal position of an individual and determines the possibility to use one of the most fundamental rights. From the pedagogical perspective, the author proposes taking into account the legal environment in which educational diagnostics functions, and which – although roughly – he presents in the article, whereas from the legal perspective he points out to the necessity of taking into account the educational diagnostics’ conditioning in the evaluation process of implementing equal access to education.

The right to education for persons with disabilities results from the constitutional principle of universal and equal access to education, however, it frequently encounters difficulties in implementation. This issue is particularly important not only from the point of view of Polish law but also due to international guarantees of universal access to education and activities aimed at the elimination of all forms of discrimination. They were included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on Human Rights. European standards in this respect are set, first of all, by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, EU regulations and directives, as well as by the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Moreover, the issue of the universal and equal right to education was also raised in the documents of the Council of Europe: the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Social Charter, judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, and decisions of the European Committee of Social Rights.

The right to education is at the heart of the notion of cultural rights, established in basic laws and international treaties. Meanwhile, outside the official educational system, the phenomenon of tutoring is becoming an increasingly influential factor contributing to the deepening of inequalities in access to education. This article presents the results of research carried out using the survey method - auditorium questionnaire, on the total population of the first-year students of first-cycle programme and long-cycle Master’s programme at the University of Rzeszów. The aim of the article was to indicate the cultural and social factors that determine the use of private tutoring by the surveyed students. The University of Rzeszów is the largest public institution of higher education in south-eastern Poland. The research provided interesting conclusions for the discussion on the development of informal education in the form of additional paid lessons and their impact on the formal education system in Poland.