What the new academic year has in store for schoolchildren and students
IS IT PRESTIGIOUS TO BE A WORKER?
On Sept. 1 the traditional bells signaling the beginning of the school year rang at more than 20,000 Ukrainian elementary schools, nearly 1,000 schools of higher education, and more than 900 vocational training institutes. Education ministry officials feel confident that the crisis that has afflicted the education system in recent years has been overcome, and that this sphere is confidently advancing along the road to progress and improvement.
There are facts to support this claim. This year there are practically no staff shortages. There are approximately 600 vacancies, compared to the 7,000 of several years ago, and wage arrears are at 0.1 percent. This year over 90 percent of required textbooks for schoolchildren, particularly sixth-graders, have been published and delivered, and a number of textbooks on physics, chemistry, mathematics, and literature have been updated. The rest — 10 percent and an additional 25 percent of the textbooks — are kept in reserve and will soon be delivered to public libraries to add to their stock.
Over five million children attended the first day of school on Sept. 1, including some 300,000 first-graders. More than 150 million hryvnias have been assigned for central heating, overhauls, and routine school repairs from central and local budgets. Over three-quarters of elementary schools were reported ready for use as of Aug. 28. Besides school maintenance costs, other expenditures have increased. This year teachers were given another raise; from now on they are to be paid 900 hryvnias a month.
One thing that Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science has not bothered to provide is gifts for first-graders. “This is a matter that must be dealt with by local authorities; it will be the latter’s responsibility to arrange for such gifts to be presented to first-graders on Sept. 1,” explained Minister Stanislav Nikolaienko, adding, “However, there will be no new ABCs published this year; we decided to use the budget appropriations to publish textbooks dealing with Ukrainian and foreign literature, because there is a catastrophic shortage of these textbooks.”
This year enrollment statistics for Ukrainian vocational training schools (PTUs) look exceptionally optimistic: 82 percent enrollment compared to last year’s 68 percent. This year, one out of every two vocational school graduates boasts two or more trades, and more than 15,000 graduated cum laude.
The popularity of PTUs is increasing. Official statistics indicate that this year quite a few 11th-graders have applied to vocational schools. This is understandable, as the Ukrainian labor market is registering a rising demand for skilled workers, especially in construction, industry, services, and tourism. According to Ukraine’s education minister, PTU graduates have no problems finding employment; they are in demand even when they are still studying. A number of businesses are prepared to pay them a monthly salary almost on part with regular engineers.
“Qualified workers are very much in demand now,” the minister says. “In Kharkiv there are almost twice as many students as workers; there are lots of job openings for them.” The demand for skilled workers is a positive phenomenon, of course, especially considering that over 300,000 PTU graduates are fatherless sons or from poor families for whom such employment opportunities are godsends.
Nor are teenagers who are enrolled in PTUs discouraged when they try to become teachers. According to Nikolaienko, all graduates who accept postings in rural areas will receive salary advances equal to five payments of “minimum wages,” and there are budget appropriations available.
Another nagging problem-PTU maintenance and repair — has also been resolved. PTU appropriations in the 2006 budget amount to 1.7 billion hryvnias. Next year this sum will be increased by 100 million hryvnias. This has allowed PTUs to pay all municipal bills, stipends, repair all problem facilities, and even purchase some 12,000 computers. In other words, chances are there will be no complaints about teaching conditions this year. Let’s hope that ministry officials will not disappoint us where quality of education is concerned.
