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“Education is the last thing on the government’s mind,” says former Ukrainian minister

There are attestation panels that spend weeks burning the midnight oil and reading hundreds of theses, in some of which there is an element of plagiarism. But even then, the panel can’t throw out their work. In my term, there were several such cases: I, as minister, couldn’t take a decision on whether a scientific paper should have been rejected. Procedure demanded that I had to send it to another institute, university or academic panel for review.

But specialists in a given area frequently spent their time covering one another’s backs. They would see white and insist it was black. There was no way you could refuse to award an academic title – there could be no professional conclusion that the work wasn’t good enough. There was, however, one demonstrative situation, when an attestation panel refused to give an academic honour to Petro Yushchenko [the brother of Ukraine’s third president Viktor Yushchenko – ed.].

From June 2021, academic titles will be awarded by a national agency for the safeguarding of quality in higher education. It has to develop a new system and take it to the ministry, after which the cabinet of ministers will ratify it. I hope the minister of education will do so.

Between 2014 and 2016, there were five cases of academic titles being withdrawn. But since 2016, after some legal changes, the ministry has no longer any right to withdraw an existing honour: only the national agency can do that and there are still no rules for doing it. The ministry and the national agency have together been drawing up a list, but given the government’s resignation it has been returned to us. The new minister’s policy on this should be very interesting: he is, after all about to pass an act that potentially concerns himself.

This year, almost five billion hryvnya [£146m] have been withdrawn from the education budget, in order to stabilise funding for fighting coronavirus, and education and science haven’t been awarded any cash from that fund for working in pandemic conditions, despite the fact that 2.7 billion hryvnya [£78.9m] was allocated to extra funding for the ministry of internal affairs. What does this situation say to you?

It says only one thing: that education is the last thing on the Shmygal government’s mind. The 2020 budget included an allocation of 360 million hryvnya for the professional development of teachers. The money was taken away, and won’t be returned. They also withdrew an extra 159 million hrvynya designated for the acquisition of equipment for vocational schools and colleges. Then there was the billion hryvnya for refurbishing schools. When someone’s roof is going to leak, it will be Mr Shmygal who has to answer the question of: “why, with a separate budget for refurbishment for the first time in years, did they then go and take it away?”

A school in Melitopol, southern Ukraine | Wikimedia Commons / Oleg Dovgal. Some rights reserved

The stabilising fund has produced nothing for education. I have nothing against the police and the National Guard (well, hopefully not the members who rape people) getting bonuses. But I find it incredible that instructors in external independent testing, often elderly members of a higher risk group, are not getting similar extra cash. The price of this would be around 30-40m hryvnya [£11m – ed.]

The fund provided nothing to buy masks or thermometers, or to create safe conditions. They were all provided by donors in other countries. The start of the school year on 1 September is not very far off. The deputy minister has said that there will be no distance learning, but hasn’t explained what kind will there be instead. British schools, for example, are splitting up classes, and its government provided an extra one billion pounds out of its budget. What is Shmygal’s government doing for Ukraine’s teachers? The answer is: nothing. This is its exemplary attitude to education.

Independent external assessment has been obligatory for entrance exams for Ukraine’s colleges and universities since 2008. There are also paid test courses, where candidates can practice how to take the exam. This year, pilot assessments were dropped two days before the date allocated for them to take place. This was a surprise to both school leavers and even the centre for the assessment of educational quality (the organising institution). In other words, a decision was taken by the government. There was also a discussion about whether to abandon assessment completely in the future, although they continued with it this year. How likely do you think the abolition of independent external assessment will be in the future, and who has an interest in the issue? Did you feel pressure on you to abolish it when you headed your ministry?

There were never any conversations about cancelling the assessment. And even if there had been, I was sure of what I wanted: this is the reform that people have trusted most since our country’s declaration of independence.

This year, the government’s position on the assessment issue stunned everyone, but also showed that society was inclined to protect it. I think that after this reaction, the matter will be dropped. However, as well as the school-leaving independent assessment, the independent external assessment is also essential for numerous subjects at Master’s level. It’s also essential for going to university after college. I think, however, that independent external assessment after a Master’s, a college or medical school is under serious doubt. Rectors and certain students (those who don’t work) also don’t like it. Heads of educational establishments, however, are fond of it. So I’m not worried about it.

Do you support the recent law abandoning independent external assessment for school leavers from the temporarily occupied areas? How many people will be able to use this right this year?

The hatred towards children living in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions outside Ukrainian control reminds me of the Novye Sanzhary case [a settlement in the Poltava region where residents protested against an influx of people evacuated from China – ed.]: Ukrainians have been united in showing what they feel about their fellow-citizens. I see these kids as Ukrainian citizens; they need to have the chance to get out of there. This approach should be a single, humanitarian policy from our government in relation to these territories. But the situation is attracting a lot of fake news.

Children from the temporarily occupied areas, just like children from Crimea, have been able to go to Ukrainian universities for a long time without passing an independent external assessment. In 2019, 1,600 school leavers from Donetsk and Luhansk entered universities in mainstream Ukraine, as did 265 young people from Crimea. And the number of those has been rising year on year since 2014. The law has now offered a quota entry to all universities without external assessment. The list of universities that would take them used to be limited. The only question now is whether there will be an extra state demand.

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