Abstract A polarized polynomial form (PPF) (modulo k) is a modulo k sum of products of variables x 1, . . . , xn or their Post negations, where the number of negations of each variable is determined by the polarization vector of the PPF. The length of a PPF is the number of its pairwise distinct summands. The length of a function f(x 1, . . . , xn )of k-valued logic in the class of PPFs is the minimum length among all PPFs realizing the function. The paper presents a sequence of symmetric functions fn (x 1, . . . , xn )of three-valued logic such that the length of each function fn in the class of PPFs is not less than ⌊3 n+1/4⌋, where ⌊a⌋ denotes the greatest integer less or equal to the number a. The complexity of a system of PPFs sharing the same polarization vector is the number of pairwise distinct summands entering into all of these PPFs. The complexity L k PPF ( F ) $L_k^{{\rm{PPF}}}(F)$ of a system F ={f 1,..., fm } of functions of k-valued logic depending on variables x 1,..., xn in the class of PPFs is the minimum complexity among all systems of PPFs {p 1,...,pm }such that all PPFs p 1,...,pm share the same polarization vector and the PPF pj realizes the function fj , j = 1,...,m. Let L k PPF ( m , n ) = max F L 2 PPF ( F ) $L_k^{{\rm{PPF}}}(m,n)\, = \,\mathop {\max }\limits_F L_2^{{\rm{PPF}}}(F)$ , where F runs through all systems consisting of m functions of k-valued logic depending on variables x 1,..., xn . For prime values of k it is easy to derive the estimate L k PPF ( m , n ) ≤ k n $L_k^{{\rm{PPF}}}(m,n)\, \le \,{k^n}$ . In this paper it is shown that L k PPF ( m , n ) = 2 n $L_k^{{\rm{PPF}}}(m,n)\, = \,{2^n}$ and L k PPF ( m , n ) = 3 n $L_k^{{\rm{PPF}}}(m,n)\, = \,{3^n}$ for all m ≥ 2, n= 1, 2, . . . Moreover, it is demonstrated that the estimates remain valid when consideration is restricted to systems of symmetric functions only.