The Ministry of Education of Ukraine is facing a difficult challenge on which the state’s future directly depends. Ministers must decide what conditions to offer schoolchildren currently abroad, where they received temporary shelter during the war, to return them to the Motherland. It is not as simple as it may seem at first glance, but it is also not as hopeless as it looks at the second one.
People are more valuable than gold
Sociologists note two main demographic problems that Ukraine will face after the end of the war:
– lack of men of childbearing age;
– lack of teenagers who can give birth to children and work in 5-10 years.
According to official data (which are approximate due to the martial law and the simplified border crossing system), more than 1 million representatives of Ukrainian youth left for the territory of other countries. 400,000 of them are school-aged children who master the school curriculum according to the European system.
Even though the level of Ukrainian schoolchildren compared to EU schoolchildren is estimated to be high, it will be tough to return them to Ukrainian schools.
In order to prevent the loss of the young “asset” of Ukrainians, the state must develop a clear plan that must be explained to people when they choose where to live next.
Do not spare efforts
It is worth fighting for young people no less fiercely than for the territories; therefore, the Minister of Education emphasized that it is necessary to develop a program for the reintegration of such schoolchildren.
Certain factors are very significant for this process:
1. many students try to study at the school of the host country and at the Ukrainian school at the same time;
2. due to the increased workload, parents decide to stop studying under the Ukrainian system, choosing current advantages;
3. it deepens foreign integration, cutting off avenues for return.
The situation seems to be a stalemate, but they are working on it.
There is hope
So far, several decisions have already been made:
– universal disciplines mastered in European schools will be included in the certificate;
– after returning, it will be necessary to make up only the Ukrainian language, literature, and history;
– it’s necessary to create remote classes to study these sciences in real-time during a temporary shelter in another country.
This will reduce the workload and make it possible not to accumulate debts, which will have to be passed shortly after returning. Another “trump card” is the creation of attractive conditions for obtaining higher education in Ukraine.
