An invisible order. Why does the Ministry of Education and Science want to eliminate distance learning?

July turned out to be hot not only in terms of air temperature - fierce discussions raged in the educational community around the order of the Ministry of Education and Science, which supposedly should limit distance learning in schools.

We are talking about the order of the Ministry of Education and Science “On approval of the procedure and conditions for obtaining general secondary education in conditions of martial law in Ukraine” (hereinafter referred to as order No. 850). This document is already called “Schrodinger’s order” because it supposedly exists, but at the same time it doesn’t exist: the Ministry of Education and Science first prepared the document, and then, after a wave of criticism, recalled it for revision. Trade unions, the Association of Ukrainian Cities, and public organizations have already made their comments to it public. They emphasized that this document was not agreed upon or discussed with them.

This matter has already gone far beyond the ministry - it was considered at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk. A citizens' petition criticizing Order No. 850 received more than 27 thousand votes on the government portal in just a few days. Prime Minister Shmygal, in response to the petition, noted that the order will be finalized by a working group.

How many orders do you know from the Ministry of Education and Science that receive so much attention? And all because its implementation will lead to serious consequences, and they are not just about the abolition of distance learning in schools.

To understand the situation, ZN.UA sent requests to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the Association of Ukrainian Cities (ASU), because the founders of the schools are local governments.

The official version of the need for Order No. 850, which was explained to us by the Ministry of Education and Science, is as follows: “Distance education is one of the key reasons for the decline in the quality of education, and we cannot allow educational losses to deepen.” The department also explained that the order is one of the tools of the comprehensive “Offline School” policy, the goal of which is to return as many children as possible to full-time education where the security situation allows, and to effectively organize the educational process during martial law in Ukraine.

Sounds attractive. I think no one will deny that face-to-face learning is more effective than distance learning, especially in conditions of possible blackouts. But it is not always possible and safe. Now let's look behind the scenes of the order of the Ministry of Education and Science - consider its consequences for students (their parents will have many surprises from September 1) and for schools.

Implications for students

The innovations proposed in Order No. 850 will cover three categories of schoolchildren: children with the status of internally displaced persons, schoolchildren who study in front-line schools or live in temporarily occupied territories.

Children with IDP status, who moved with their parents to safer regions, but continue to study online in their native schools, will have to go to full-time education at schools in their new place of residence. It will be possible to remain distance learning at your home school only in three cases: if the educational institution at your place of residence does not have “full-time classes” or there are not enough places in such classes, or the local school has temporarily ceased operations. Otherwise, the child will be expelled from distance learning.

Thus, parents may be deprived of the right to independently choose a school and form of education for their child. This, by the way, is a violation of the Law “On Education” (Articles 6, 55) and discriminates against IDP children, since such restrictions are proposed only for them.

The Ministry of Education and Science offers to transfer students with special needs who study remotely in schools relocated from the occupied territories to external or home study. But this means that such students will have only 5-12 lessons per week instead of the standard 30. Is this enough to master the educational material, especially in high school, and even considering the fact that Ukrainian electronic resources are blocked in the occupied territories? It is unlikely that this will help overcome educational losses, for which the ministerial order was supposedly intended.

I will explain how this will look in practice using the example of one community (according to ASU data). In the Henichesk territorial community, which is now under occupation, before the war there were 25 schools, now there is one distance school, and this is the only school in Ukraine where they study the Crimean Tatar language and literature, and the only one that has survived from the network of schools in the community. If Order No. 850 comes into force, the school will disappear.

The Association of Ukrainian Cities notes: “Today, educational institutions of communities are the only bridge that provides communication between the controlled territory of Ukraine and the occupied territory of communities. The destruction of education will lead to irreparable consequences, namely: disappointment of students, their parents and teachers in the fact that their state needs them, the actual victory of Russian propaganda at WOT, and the growth of social tension in the educational environment.”

Schoolchildren from front-line territories. Due to the threat of shelling, schools near the front line operate mainly remotely. They will not be able to switch to full-time or blended learning, with all due respect to the Ministry of Education and Science and its orders. This means that if Order No. 850 is adopted, they will have to be closed.

Implications for schools

This is where, in my opinion, the real purpose of Order No. 850 is hidden. Schools want to be required to switch to full-time or hybrid learning, and in order to implement this, there must be shelters in the educational institution or at a distance of no more than 500 meters from it. Also, the school must have sufficient material resources. Educational institutions that cannot meet these conditions must suspend their activities. And a follow-up shot: distance classes must have at least 20 students, and this does not include those who are studying externally or at home (and this may mean closing them in some schools). In parentheses, I note that this norm contradicts the norm of the Law “On Complete General Secondary Education” (Article 12), which allows the opening of classes if there are at least five students in them.

All these conditions mean that the ministerial order will have a wide impact on the network of schools - there will be fewer of them and, accordingly, there will be a reduction in teachers. In some communities, the school network will be almost completely destroyed. Moreover, such consequences will concern mainly schools in front-line zones and those that have been relocated from BOT and now continue to work remotely.

How the ideas of Order No. 850 will work in practice are clearly illustrated by the examples provided to us by the ASU.

In Krivoy Rog, which is systematically shelled by the enemy, 86 school buildings were destroyed (and this is the material base for education), alarms last from 15 minutes to nine hours, which affects the psychological state and is unlikely to contribute to high-quality in-person education. Under such conditions, it is impossible to fulfill the requirements of the Ministry of Education and Science for training exclusively in full-time or mixed format.

In the Belozersk settlement territorial community in the Kherson region, with this approach, no more than three schools out of nine will remain, which will lead to the dismissal of hundreds of teaching staff and the loss of a third of students.

In the Severodonetsk territorial community of the Luhansk region, out of 20 schools, only two will remain, out of 405 teachers - 40. In the Mariupol community of the Donetsk region, 100 teachers out of 261 who are currently working will be fired.

“The majority of these teachers live in rural or suburban areas, where they do not have the opportunity to find a job,” stated in the analytical report of the Mariupol territorial community. – That is, these teachers are left without a livelihood. This will lead to an increase in unemployment in territorial communities, emotional stress, and loss of qualified teaching staff, which will negatively affect the economic situation in the community. This will be an impetus for teachers to leave the territory of Ukraine abroad, and possibly even return to the occupied territories.”

We asked the Ministry of Education and Science whether they had calculated the consequences of implementing Order No. 850 for the education system: how many teachers will be fired, how many schools will cease operations, what savings in educational subventions are expected (because the educational subvention is just teacher salaries)? They did not provide clear figures and calculations in response to our request, but explained that, together with the regions, they carried out modeling of a network of educational institutions for the front-line regions that have BOT (Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporozhye). Meanwhile, human rights activists and public organizations give an approximate figure: about 10 thousand teachers could be fired from schools displaced from the BOT alone.

The Ministry of Education and Science puts forward a requirement for schools to work in person with shelters. Does the department know how many schools have protective structures? We were diplomatically answered that in Ukraine there are 10,111 shelters in institutions of general secondary education and another 2,416 shelters of other business entities used by schools. We did not know how many schools do not have shelters, since the ministry “does not conduct relevant surveys and is not the manager of this information.”

Even if schools want to comply with the Ministry of Education and Science's order to provide shelters and in-person learning, it will be difficult to do so. For example, in the Muzykovskaya rural community (20 km from Kherson) they calculated that to build a shelter in the local lyceum, 10 million UAH are needed, and this is an unaffordable amount for the budget of the community, which has lost powerful budget-forming taxpayers. It is also impossible to carry out construction work under constant shelling.

The Ministry of Education and Science says that they are aware of the problem with shelters and are working to solve it in the front-line and border areas. There are several ways to do this. The first is a state subsidy for the construction of shelters. The Ministry has already approved 57 projects for the repair and construction of shelters, including 53 for eight front-line and border regions of Ukraine with Russia. But the subvention will not cover all the needs of the communities, so the second way is to search for donor funds. And third, the regions can receive a state subsidy (UAH 1 billion) for school buses to transport children to schools that have shelters. But will parents agree to transport their children daily under fire on bad roads? For example, in the same Muzykovskaya community, a 20 km long bypass road is not only dangerous due to shelling, but is also in unsatisfactory condition, because its major repairs began before the full-scale invasion and were never completed.

What's next?

I doubt that after revision there will be fundamental changes in Order No. 850. Because, firstly, in my opinion, the most important thing in it is not distance learning, but the optimization of the school network and saving state subventions. Although in response to our request, the Ministry of Education and Science claims that saving money is not the purpose of Order No. 850. Perhaps, to appease the public, they will tie a few bows to him or push his ideas into other laws or orders that the general public may not notice. Because even this order did not undergo public discussion.

I think the authorities will now have to make a difficult choice between finding funds to maintain the education system and populism. But openly cutting funding for schools, especially those located in the front-line zone and those displaced from the Great Patriotic War, is political suicide. Not finding funds to maintain a huge education system is even more suicide. But options such as the order of the Ministry of Education and Science look more acceptable in the eyes of society. Moreover, the embrasure will be obscured by one single ministry.

By the way, the Ministry of Education and Science is inviting schools to switch to blended learning, but what is it? We asked representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science where such a term is defined in the laws and whether they plan to initiate legislative changes in order to harmonize the points of their order and the laws (class occupancy, parents’ choice of school, etc.). We were told that the law allows for combining different forms of education, and this is mixed, and it has already been used during the pandemic. “Blended learning therefore requires a clear definition and regulatory framework for its proper application. And this was precisely one of the goals when creating Order No. 850 - to standardize at the legislative level the very concept of “blended learning,” says the Ministry of Education and Science. But the Ministry of Education and Science is not a legislative body, but an executive body. During martial law, the Ministry of Education and Science has the right to regulate certain issues with its orders, but only where they are not regulated by law (Law on Education, Art. 75-1).

The second fact, which casts doubt that Order No. 850 will undergo significant changes after processing, is a lot of sweet carrots that are now promised to teachers: assistance from the employment service, the creation of a single vacancy portal, individual support by career consultants, the creation of a personnel reserve of teachers with an average payment wages and preparing them for work in the de-occupied territories. All this requires funds. But even if we assume that they are found in the state, the “downsized” teachers will still lose in payments, because a teacher’s salary is not only a bare rate, it also includes many different additional payments.

Third, the idea to review payments to teachers is also found in the letter of the Ministry of Education and Science dated May 27, 2024 “On consideration of the issue of suspending wages and downtime payments to teaching staff in the temporarily occupied territory.” We are talking about the need for additional study of the issue of payments to teachers who are on the BOT. These are the so-called downtime funds.

In fact, we all understand why the government must save and look for funds, and that the country is now going through difficult times. But why is communication with society so inept? If there are problems, it’s worth talking about them directly and discussing publicly how we can tighten our belts and what to do.

PS When this material was being prepared, the first meeting of the working group at the Ministry of Education and Science took place to develop proposals for order No. 850. And comments from its participants about first impressions have already appeared. ASU expert Mikhail Gonchar, in a commentary to ZN.UA, noted: “Controversial issues were removed from draft order No. 850, but they all appeared in another order, wrapped in a specific bureaucratic form. That is, now we will have several orders instead of one.”

People's Deputy Pavel Sushko also commented on the work of the group: “The version that was presented to the working group looks even worse. The existing shortcomings have not been eliminated, and all controversial provisions have simply been transferred as changes to other orders of the Ministry of Education and Science... In such a wording, when by-laws are not consistent with either the laws or the Constitution, they will not work and be implemented.”