What had the worst impact on school education reform – Covid, war or Education Minister Shkarlet?
What does NUS look like in schools now? Is it possible to read all the works from the school curriculum in the allotted time? What about mastering a physics program that takes twice as many hours as is included in the schedule? Why are soft skills needed and how does their absence prevent adults from making constructive management decisions, including in the field of education? The publication LB.ua invited the co-founder of the public organization “Smart Osvita” Ivanna Kobernik for an interview to discuss with her the urgent steps that school education needs.
We are talking about educational losses due to Covid and because of the war, but there are also educational losses due to the policies of the previous leadership of the Ministry of Education and Science, which did not engage in reform. What was lost due to the inaction of the Ministry of Education and Science during the Shkarlet era?
The most important thing is that education has ceased to be a government priority. From 2016 to 2019, education was in all the news, at all government meetings, on the political agenda, laws were adopted, reforms were promoted, there were discussions. This was an unconditional move forward with the involvement of a huge number of stakeholders.
During Shkarlet's time, all processes simply stopped. We returned to the Soviet Union in a quantum leap. Accordingly, the pace of reform was lost. The ones who suffered the most, of course, were the children who entered the fifth grade following what was essentially an unprepared reform. It is interesting that recently at the presentation of the Global Teacher Prize Ukraine, Prime Minister Shmygal said: “We have resumed the reform of the NUS.” That is, he actually admitted that the reform was stopped.
In 2022, children entered fifth grade without textbooks. War cannot be an excuse for this. Yes, a billion hryvnia, which was needed to print textbooks, was taken for military needs, this is understandable. But even for the state this is not a fantastic amount and it was quite possible to negotiate this amount with donors.
The Ministry of Education and Science should do this: reconsider which textbooks must be printed and which are not. There was a significant problem that none of the donors wanted to publish the history of Ukraine for political reasons. The Ministry of Education and Science should agree on the printing of other textbooks.
As a result, due to the managerial inability of the Ministry of Education and Science to come to an agreement, this story ended with the European Union saying: “Okay, we are ready to publish basic textbooks, but physically print them only in Europe,” which is much more expensive. At the same time, they were ready to pay only for printing, without remuneration for textbook authors and publishing houses.
Only a million euros had to be found to pay the publishers and authors of the textbooks. As a result, the Ministry of Education and Science asked another international donor for this million, but he did not pay the publishers and authors, but printed another textbook with this money.
In Europe, some textbooks were printed - only those publishers who agreed to give away their moral rights for free, and they received nothing for it. And for the most part, these were not the textbooks that teachers wanted.
This is just some kind of case that should go down in history, how to do everything as unsuccessfully as possible.
Absolutely.
It seems that even the letter about the EU’s readiness to print textbooks upon waiver of moral rights was not sent to all publishing houses. That is, some authors and publishers were ready to give away their textbook and print it for free, but they did not receive such an offer.
Other publishing houses refused to give away their textbooks without a fee; they sold them here for money.
In fact, there were many possible solutions. For example, it was possible to negotiate with donors about textbooks in foreign languages - contact UNICEF or the British Council with a request to buy English language textbooks for Ukrainian schoolchildren. And thus, money would be freed up for printing Ukrainian textbooks on other subjects.
There is another very important unresolved problem - the lack of recommendations from the Ministry of Education and Science on what to do with IDP children who have problems with documents. There are teachers and school directors who go to meetings, take undocumented children to study, and then they deliver the documents or they pull them up from information systems. And there are cases when school directors approach the issue formally: no documents - no school.
So, I recently learned about 9 children from the Kherson region who left due to flooding and who did not study anywhere in September-October.
Where do these children live?
In a shelter in Kyiv. These are children from vulnerable families.
I intervened in the situation, asked for help from the Kyiv City State Administration, and they responded. But all this was not quick. And it shouldn't work like that.
Are you currently collaborating with the Ministry of Education and Science?
I had several meetings with the minister, and I was invited to form and moderate a panel on NUS at the August conference. Actually, I tried to collect all these sensitive topics, raise pressing questions and, if possible, get answers from the Ministry of Education and Science. It seems to me that it turned out to be a fairly honest conversation. But again, we have received a certain number of important promises, but we continue to wait for concrete steps.
For example?
Most of all, everyone was waiting for information about the NUS subvention for 2024. The budget has already been voted on in the 1st reading, one and a half billion hryvnia are allocated for the NUS, this is good news. Let's see how the education budget changes after parliamentary amendments.
Questions that still remain unanswered are changes to certain regulatory documents, in particular the Order of the Ministry of Education and Science on dividing the class into groups. It is very important to review the programs and textbooks for the 5th and 6th grades - those that were approved under Shkarlet. Many of them do not comply with the NUS Standard and lead to imitation of reform.
What steps should the Ministry of Education and Science take immediately to “reanimate” NUS?
Reconsidering educational programs more broadly. Everyone understands that it is a complex, large-scale task, but I would like to see the beginning of this work. Moreover, some of the work had already been done by educational public organizations since the beginning of the war. Gather them once, ask them to show what they have, and use these insights - they are ready, at least as a quick fix. “Smart Education” and others declared that they were ready to share their experiences.
We all – I mean the educational environment – are very careful in our criticism of the current leadership of the Ministry of Education and Science. We still maintain cautious optimism and confidence. We hope that after clearing the territory, which continues further, real steps will begin. But this honeymoon will end someday.
What do you mean by clearing the area?
For example, from the Directorate of General Secondary Education, excuse me, two devils were fired, one of whom had already been fired earlier, but Shkarlet revived him (we do not indicate the names of the “devils” at Ivanna’s request, but teachers probably know who we are talking about - LB.ua ).
There are other good things about MES. This is also the case of the reorganization of NAU. This and the gradual removal of powers from the IMZO (Institute for Modernization of the Content of Education - LB.ua), this cannot but be welcomed. This is a fairly tenacious monster, because they tried to do something with IMS under Kvita, then under Grinevich and under Novosad (previous ministers of education - LB.ua). Well, under Shkarlet IMZO felt great. We are now on our fourth attempt. A significant part of the procurement and holding of the Olympics was taken away from them. These are, of course, good signs, but we are all waiting for this cutting off of the Gorgon’s heads to end in something really real.
A new director of the Directorate of General and Secondary Education, Igor Khvorostyany, has already been appointed, and I have serious hopes regarding the reform of the content of education. Because Igor understands what the phrase “content of education” means.
What does the phrase “content of education” mean?
The content of education is what children learn in school. These are the meanings that are embedded in educational programs and textbooks.
By and large, our textbooks are not the best due to the fact that they correspond to programs that need revision. War is a sad, but reason to finally remove everything unnecessary from the programs, including from those classes that have not yet been touched by NUS.
What needs to be cleaned?
Anything that does not develop our children will not help them become successful citizens of the 21st century.
For example, the Ukrainian language in schools is overloaded with mechanical study of grammar and philological terminology, as if we are preparing candidates of philological sciences. And at the same time, there is practically no training in working with text, reading non-fiction texts, scientific literature, or journalism. We are not taught to express our opinions, argue, defend our position and correctly understand the position of others. In developed educational systems, all this is studied in the subject “native language”.
The same goes for literature. The literature program, firstly, is deeply inconsistent with the age characteristics of children. This is not literature for children, this is literature for adults, which for some reason children should read.
Secondly. If you open the program and simply count the number of pages of what needs to be read, you will realize that no living child can read absolutely everything that the program provides. If he does something else besides literature. It should not be.
Similarly, the physics program in grades 10-11 includes such a volume of material as geometry and algebra combined. Four hours are allotted for algebra and geometry alone, and two for physics. This means that not a single child in Ukraine, except for 5% of very gifted children, can master the physics program simply physically, if he does not study additionally with tutors. Because it is impossible to master in two hours what is designed for at least 4 hours a week.
The same goes for chemistry. Now this is a very important area in demand in the world. But chemistry in the Ukrainian school is some kind of history of chemistry of the early twentieth century.
There are many such examples. And every year the obsolescence of the programs becomes more and more obvious.
Is the Ministry capable of doing this?
The Ministry must organize this work. In secondary education, the Ministry of Education and Science has only two functions: the content of education and the distribution of educational subventions, that’s all. The maintenance of schools comes from local budgets.
In previous years, under Liliya Grinevich, under Anna Novosad, the Ministry of Education and Science had extensive experience in cooperation with civil society. It was a consolidation of efforts that led to the introduction of a powerful large-scale reform, which, unfortunately, was sent into a lethargic sleep or knocked out under Shkarlet.
At least in primary schools, the reform was carried out through synergy and cooperation between the state (represented by the ministry) and the public sector. Then the public sector and the Shkarlet ministry took different paths, but civil society became very strong during this time. There are public organizations in education that have created their own educational programs that teach children online, that have created powerful electronic platforms that set up shelters or create the opportunity to study where the school has been destroyed.
An example where OO experience could be used is a facilitated program for children who study abroad. Perhaps it appeared a little late and there are some unfortunate moments, but it is very good that the program has been adopted and should make life easier for children who combine studies in two schools. But the experience of public organizations, which now, during the war, are teaching thousands of children with limited access to education, did not become part of this decision. Although the ministry knew about these programs, which are formatted, in which the core of knowledge is highlighted, everything secondary is taken away, and adapted to online. All this experience was not used by the ministry in any way.
You often repeat that it takes 5-10 years to see the results of work in secondary education. We have 5 years from the start of NUS. What result do we see now?
The result of the NUS and the reform in general cannot be separated from the consequences of Covid and war. To talk about the results, special studies and monitoring are needed. Unfortunately, under Minister Shkarlet they were not carried out deliberately. Now, I hope, monitoring will be restored and we will have more objective information.
Unfortunately, online education is least suitable for elementary schools. This is recognized all over the world, it is absolutely not effective. We need to look for an opportunity to take children offline.
One of the important achievements of the reform: for the first time, the teacher’s right to independently choose approaches and methods was legally enshrined. Previously, even if the teacher understood that the old Soviet methods did not work, he could not use others. Now he can, because he has secured pedagogical freedom.
The second achievement: the educational environment began to change. Again, we are forced to make allowances for the war, for the destruction to which the educational infrastructure was subjected. But last week I was in Zhitomir, in classes of children whose school was destroyed by a Russian missile, and who are now forced to study in other educational institutions. Creating an environment for them, local authorities equipped classrooms according to NUS standards. I was at the Mariupol Lyceum near Kiev, I look with delight at the educational spaces that the SaveED Foundation creates in de-occupied villages - the idea of a developing environment, as an integral part of the educational process, lives even in such difficult conditions.
And the third thing that seems very important to me: the added value of soft skills and attention to the practical application of acquired knowledge. Previously, this was not a consideration for the school at all. I understand that different schools have implemented this with varying degrees of success, but, nevertheless, this is included in the reform.
They managed to do one study before the start of Covid, in the third pilot classes of NUS. We saw that children who studied under the NUS program enjoyed going to school more, were more free, inquisitive, asked more questions and interacted better in groups. It seems to me that this is a very important added value that has been introduced into primary schools.
It is also very important that before the start of the war and before Shkarlet’s arrival, they managed to create a system for improving the qualifications of primary school teachers. It had a mandatory online course common to everyone, and only after that face-to-face classes at regional institutes of postgraduate education. During surveys, teachers said that it was in this online course that they learned what the new standard is and understood how it differs from the old one. Accordingly, this online course also set the direction for the training that took place in the graduate institutes.
In the future, such a compulsory course was to be developed for high school. But they didn’t do this. And here I see a huge risk that the advanced training that is now being promised will take very different paths. Due to the fact that there is no single assembly point. At the same time, I want to note that the public union “Osvitoria”, on its own initiative, developed such a course for secondary school teachers, for subject teachers, it is available at the “All-Ukrainian School Online”. But, unfortunately, it is not mandatory. And the Ministry could now make this course mandatory, and oblige all providers of teacher training to move in this direction in order to communicate correctly and convey to teachers the values of the reform and methods that they can use in their work.
To what extent is the NUS that is now in primary school the NUS that was intended?
NUS was in a lethargic sleep, now they are trying to resuscitate her, transfer her to the intensive care unit, and then take her to rehabilitation. The war posed many other challenges, such as how to provide Ukrainian children with access to education. Therefore, it is not entirely correct to approach the wartime NLS with a peacetime ruler.
In Kyiv, most schools enrolled 30 children in the first grades. Accordingly, individual modular desks stand in a continuous row, like benches in a 19th-century rural school.
This is actually very interesting, because they say that there are fewer children.
I understand that we want a big victory, but a small victory is not a victory for us. I want to remind you that in 2018 there could have been 36 children in the class. It was illegal, but it was a fact. Therefore, if we have now miraculously managed to achieve compliance with this previously unobvious rule of law, sorry, this is a victory. Although, perhaps, it does not look so impressive if there were 24 children in the class.
Now regarding the desks. Indeed, often the classroom area in typical schools does not allow for single desks to be placed properly. When I look at the desks now, I remember the example that was given to us in the “Writing Data-Based Policy” course - how the British government spent 8 months agreeing on the shape of hooks for mooring boats. Yes, the approval of the size and shape of the desks could have taken years, and the solution could have been more ideal.
But we must be honest: in that situation there was no other choice. If the reform had not been started in 2018, it would not have been started at all.
European partners, in particular the Finns, asked Ukraine not to rush into carrying out the reform, but to prepare it for several more years and, for example, to begin the reform simultaneously in the first, fifth and tenth grade, at all three levels simultaneously. Then the time frame for implementing the reform could be shorter. But of course, politically we realized that this was impossible. Because no one knows what will happen in Ukraine in three years. And if you don’t start now, you will never start, and children will live in a post-Soviet education that will be stuck in the past more and more every day.
Returning to the topic of losses during the time of Shkarlet. How have teachers' attitudes towards reform changed? It seems to me that teachers have begun to treat NLS as something not very mandatory. None of the schools where my friends’ children go do morning circle, for example.
I would formulate this differently. Any reforms are impossible when those who must implement them are exhausted and live in constant stress. That is, when a person is essentially trying to survive, and you also tell him “reform,” this cannot cause delight.
But the morning circle is just about surviving. You can discuss who slept how, whether they heard the alarm, whether they went to shelter. Morning circle is actually a great therapeutic thing, and it’s a shame that it disappeared from Ukrainian schools.
He did not disappear from all schools. I have relatives whose children studied at one of the cool schools in the capital. After the invasion began, they moved to Chervonograd, in the Lviv region, and went to school there. They write: “Ivanka, we finally understand what NUS is, what integration is! Such good textbooks, so interesting, my daughter sits and reads in the evenings!” That Chervonograd school had the NUS-2 program with the integrated course “I explore the world.”
And there was a morning circle, which, it seems, never happened here at the Kyiv school. Unless at an open lesson with the district. And in Chervonograd there was a morning circle, there were lessons in the fresh air, trips to the park, practical experiments and much more that motivated the children to study.
Why is this not the case in all schools?
I think this is a problem of lack of methodological support. For the morning circle, you also need to have ideas. In fact, in the West there are hundreds of these ideas, and they are constantly updated. And we have the Institute for Modernization of Education, the Institute for Educational Development, we have a reform support group in the Ministry of Education and Science, we have the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, and there are n number of institutes that receive salaries. All this time they would have to write conditional scenarios for the morning circle, and options for developing soft skills in children. Where are all these teaching materials?
Of course, if a teacher is told: develop your own educational program, and approve it, and get approval from the State Service for Quality Education, he will answer: “Listen, go somewhere, I’ll take my notes “Lesson No. 16”, and I’ll use it.”
I have one more important question: in 2019, we talked about the fact that there are no Ukrainian manufacturers of educational supplies, teaching materials, and furniture. Has the market developed over the years?
To be honest, I don’t know the current situation after the start of the invasion. But before the war it a) developed, b) it had both positive and negative consequences.
Have the tender games begun?
Cartel agreements began - the four main producers agreed among themselves how not to allow anyone else to trade.
Are these desk manufacturers?
Not only, but mainly furniture manufacturers.
But local small producers have also developed their business. And if the local authorities were smart, and the producers were diligent enough, then, in principle, everything was fine with them too.
As for laboratories, now, given the war, the most correct way would be to create interschool laboratories on the basis of out-of-school educational institutions. I'll explain why.
For example, even before the war, a good set of reagents cost approximately 92,000 UAH; this is a set of all reagents for all types of laboratory work. The conditional ninth grade must do one laboratory work on one topic per year, and the school must buy only 92,000 UAH. Also tenth, also eleventh. That is, of course, if more children could use this laboratory, then the rational use of funds would be much higher.
These are management decisions, everyone needs to agree on where we will put this laboratory, and how will children from different schools go there, what is the schedule? And these are the same soft skills that NUS is trying to develop, which, unfortunately, are not developed in a large number of adults, which also prevents the achievement of rational, constructive management decisions.
You said earlier that it is very important that parents ask for progressive changes. Do you think parents have this request?
Parents are also different. There are actually those with a progressive request, and there are those with the attitude: “everything should be the way it was for me.” Such parents are worried when they see that their child’s life is not the same as theirs. Here parents need to work with themselves, and it’s nice if the teacher can explain to them that: “Sorry, you studied 20 or 30 years ago. Life has changed a little. We now have a lot of new information and scientific knowledge on how to better teach children. And no, just because your child isn’t overtired or overwhelmed doesn’t mean they aren’t learning or doing anything.”
Also, Ukrainian mothers abroad, who are faced with the Western education system, seem to think that their children are playing and doing nothing. Parents fail to understand that children are systematically and purposefully taught soft skills.
Of course, if you shove a multiplication table at a child in the second grade, then in the third he seems like a star in a conventional Czech school. But, for example, he does not know how to calm another child when he bursts into tears, does not know what to do when a conflict arises, and is not able to divide a large task into small ones. And children are taught this through the example of projects that often seem like toys to our Ukrainian mothers.
I am not saying that the war showed that our education system is worse than the Western one in all respects. No, that's not true. She showed that there are a lot of good things - including academic demands within reasonable limits. But at the same time, there are many things that show this difference in society, which for a long time has been teaching children to communicate, interact in a group, follow reasonable rules, negotiate them, and teach them independence. And the fact that many parents do not understand this value is a disturbing story.
More data on the state of education will be provided by PISA, which was conducted last year in Ukraine, which is heroic in itself. I don’t know what order should be given to the Ukrainian Center for Assessing the Quality of Education and to those schools that conducted testing. These included schools in cities that often make the news due to heavy shelling.
The PISA results will not be easy for us. It's too early to talk about them, but the leading industry that was tested was reading. Last time, in 2018, it was mathematics. It seemed natural to us that there were problems with mathematics, as if we had heard everything about it for a long time. But reading seems to be less of a problem.
What could be the problem with reading? I understand that there are no results yet, but as an assumption?
The assumption is that Covid and the lack of full-time in-person education have worsened the ability of Ukrainian children to read, understand texts and be able to work with them.
Our children have nothing to learn from. We (in the school curriculum - LB.ua) do not have scientific texts for children, and there are practically no non-fiction texts. My daughter attended school abroad last year and she brought her language of instruction folder. I must say that there are no textbooks there at all, there are only printouts with assignments given by the teacher. Then you have daddy, all the child’s achievements for the year.
What can I say... Firstly, they read full-length children's novels. They read them for a long time, discussed them, worked with the text, then wrote essays and debated. And at the same time they worked through scientific or other non-fiction texts on topics related to the fiction book they were reading. And they also completed tasks that showed how scientific knowledge helped them in the context of understanding a work of art.
You can compare this to the fact that in Ukraine, eighth-graders in a Ukrainian language lesson must study a folk song and tell how they understand the beauty of folk art. Which of these will be more useful for later life and for the development of a qualified professional or a conscientious citizen?
I looked at the program for the ninth grade, I was shocked at how many works there were with the strange postscript “review”. For what purpose should a child review “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” at the age of 14? What will this review give him? The point of a literature lesson is not for the child to know the title of a certain historical work of dubious originality. The point is for the child to think, reflect, imagine, and develop an internal need to read. This is impossible if you read works “in review,” even those that have nothing to do with your life.
By the way, in the eighth grade, in foreign literature, their curriculum included the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, everything was reviewed. Of course, as a person with a humanities education, I believe that every educated person should have an idea of these civilizationally important texts. But why did the authors of the programs decide that this should be done at the age of 13?
The number of texts should be such that children actually read, work with them and learn to express their opinions, argue a position, and write in general. A review study of historical texts does not lead to this skill. Accordingly, the number of works to read should be significantly reduced.
Summing up our conversation, what still needs to be done urgently, first of all?
The first is to carry out “spring cleaning” - to initiate working groups to revise programs. It will be long, difficult, painful, and with a lot of discussions on Facebook, but at least the amount of material in the programs should be adjusted to the number of hours allocated to study them.
Secondly, textbooks must be printed - this is, first of all, working with donors and determining priorities. We must print what only we should print, and we must correctly and correctly present to donors why we need their support and where they can help us. I still don’t understand why they didn’t talk to donors about how they would first of all cover the need for textbooks in foreign languages.
The third is an action plan for what we will do with children in the occupied territories. We need to start doing this work every day now. Can we, if possible, take at least the older children and create conditions for them to study in the controlled territory?
Fourth – work, program, mechanism on how to maintain contact with Ukraine for children who are abroad. Of which, let me remind you, according to official data there are 500,000 in the European Union alone. Giving them the opportunity and motivation to stay with Ukraine is our task.
