Schematics on school textbooks: the cost is at least twice as high

A new publishing house “Atlant” has appeared on the Ukrainian educational literature market, which literally in a matter of months received from the Ministry of Education more than 100 orders for the production of school textbooks with a total value of almost 180 million UAH

Over the past two months alone, the state scientific institution of the Ministry of Education “Institute for Modernization of Educational Content” has concluded 83 agreements for the publication of textbooks with Atlant Publishing House LLC. These agreements totaling almost 163 million UAH were concluded during June-July directly, without announcing tenders

All these textbooks are intended for schools with languages ​​of instruction of national minorities (Polish, Hungarian, Romanian), as well as for students with special educational needs

A typical example is the agreement concluded on June 27 worth UAH 5.4 million for the publication of almost 12 thousand “Health, Safety and Welfare” textbooks for sixth-graders with special educational needs (For students diagnosed with F70 In the international classification of diseases, F70 means mild mental retardation)

The agreement includes a technical specification and a planned calculation, which outlines all the costs and profits of the publishing house. Expectedly, the largest item of expense is printing services - 4.8 million UAH Another 370 thousand UAH are provided for general expenses and fees to authors. The profitability of all stages of production, according to the calculation, does not exceed 5% and amounts to less than 260 thousand UAH. Thus, one textbook from “Atlanta” will cost taxpayers 455 UAH

To find out the justification of such expenses for printing services, NGL.media turned to several Ukrainian printing houses with a request to provide calculations of the cost of their services for printing a textbook according to the same technical specifications (circulation, volume, paper density, color, etc.)

As a result, it turned out that the cost of printing services in Atlanta’s calculations was at least twice as high

What are the prices in other printing houses?

NGL.media journalists turned to three printing houses, the equipment and capacity of which allow them to print the required number of textbooks

The Art-Press printing house (Dnepr) is ready to fulfill the order for UAH 2.082 million. Taking into account the additional costs and 5% profitability provided by Atlant, the total cost of the transaction could be UAH 2.575 million (UAH 215 per textbook) Order completion time - one month

The printing house “Ukraine” (Dnepr) is ready to fulfill the order for 1.725 million UAH. In this case, the total cost would be 2.2 million UAH (184 UAH per textbook) The order fulfillment period is three months

The printing house “From A to Z” (Kyiv) is ready to fulfill the order for 1.165 million UAH. The total cost in this case will decrease to 1.611 million UAH (135 UAH per textbook) Production time is 12 weeks

However, the most interesting was the price offer of the Kharkov printing house of PET LLC, where the Atlant publishing house prints its textbooks. It was this printing house that published all the textbooks under last year’s agreements between Atlanta and the Institute for Modernization of Educational Content (in December 2023, IMZO entered into 21 agreements with publishing house "Atlant", all textbooks under these agreements were published at LLC "PET")

Having received technical specifications with similar indicators from NGL.media, PET LLC expressed its readiness to print 12 thousand textbooks within a month for 871.2 thousand UAH. This is almost five times cheaper than the 4.8 million UAH pledged by Atlant.

If we take into account the additional expenses, fees and profitability laid down by Atlant, the cost of one textbook paid for from budget funds could be 109 UAH, and not 455 UAH

“This is obvious to anyone in the market. The agreement to publish the textbook “Health, Safety and Well-Being” for schoolchildren with special educational needs is just one of 83 agreements that the Institute for Modernization of Educational Content concluded with Atlant Publishing House LLC during June and July 2024. The total cost of these agreements - almost 163 million UAH Taking into account another 21 already completed agreements concluded in December last year, the total value of budget orders received by Atlant is 178 million UAH

It is difficult to determine specific overpayments for all these agreements, because for comparison it would be necessary to calculate hundreds of calculations for textbooks of different circulations and volumes for several printing houses. However, several publishing market experts, whom NGL.media asked to analyze the ten largest transactions, argue that it is obvious that the cost of printing services two to three times

“Of course, it would be worth analyzing each of these transactions in detail, but after looking at the technical specifications and planned calculations you sent, I can confidently say that the cost is inflated by two to three times, and sometimes more. This is obvious to anyone in our market,” NGL said. media technical director of one of the Ukrainian publishing houses (this interlocutor, like other experts interviewed by NGL.media, asked for anonymity, since this is a rather narrow market), which also uses the services of PET LLC

Based on such estimates, Atlanta’s profit from many months of cooperation with the state Institute for Modernization of Educational Content can reach UAH 100-120 million

Director of Atlant Publishing House LLC Lelya Minakova actually refused to comment on the inflated cost of producing the textbook “Health, Safety and Welfare,” insisting in a written response to NGL.media that “there is no such fact.”

But the director of the state scientific institution “Institute for Modernization of the Content of Education” Evgeny Bazhenkov, in response to a request from NGL.media, stated that his organization does not influence the choice of printing house “Publishing houses, including Atlant Publishing House LLC, independently determine the printing enterprise that is capable of performing state order to print a textbook within a certain period of time on the terms of the publishing house,” he claims

Titans Unite

The Atlant publishing house, which so rapidly burst into the educational literature market, was founded less than a year ago in Kyiv. However, its founders and owners are three businessmen who have long and very successfully mastered this market - Viktor Kruglov, Oleg Furman and Oleg Kostenko

Viktor Kruglov is the owner of the Osnova publishing group and the Ranok publishing house. Osnova annually publishes more than 200 new titles of educational, reference and educational books, and Ranok is a traditional supplier of textbooks for the Ministry of Education. For example, in 2021, Ranok received textbooks 121 million UAH, taking first place in the total value of contracts from the Ministry of Education Second place (82 million UAH) in this ranking went to the publishing house “Geneza”, owned by Oleg Furman, and third place (81 million UAH) went to the publishing center “Orion” of Oleg Kostenko These three publishing houses for several years in a row received more than half of all the money that the government allocates for the publication of school textbooks

“Ranok” and “Geneza” continue to lead in 2024, having already received more than 190 million UAH and 170 million UAH from the Ministry of Education, respectively, but the third place with a portfolio of orders for 163 million UAH received in just two months was taken by “Atlant”

Formally, Kruglov, Furman and Kostenko are competitors in the educational literature market. However, this did not stop them from combining interests in a new business project, which in less than a year has already received 104 agreements from the Ministry of Education for UAH 178 million

The newly created Atlant publishing house was headed by Lelya Minakova, former deputy chairman of the board of the state holding Ukrizdavpolygrafiya, the largest publishing and printing company in Ukraine, overseeing the work of 23 specialized enterprises.

Now Atlant received contracts only for textbooks for schoolchildren with special educational needs and languages ​​of instruction for national minorities

As for foreign language textbooks, “Atlant” enters into agreements for translation and adaptation with publishing houses that own the copyrights to the Ukrainian version. An analysis of the textbooks already published by “Atlant” showed that it concluded such agreements with the publishing houses of its owners – “Ranok” and “Geneza”

With textbooks for schoolchildren with special educational needs, the situation is slightly different. Such textbooks are prepared by a team of authors and submitted to the competition of the state “Institute for Modernization of the Content of Education,” which, as a result of selection, recommends them for publication at public expense. Such textbooks receive the appropriate stamp from the Ministry of Education. In the meantime, the authors register copyright for the textbook, and the Atlant publishing house enters into agreements with them for its use. Such agreements make it possible to obtain government contracts

Printing house with experience

NGL.media looked at the textbooks already published by Atlant, agreements for which were concluded in December last year, and found out that all of them were printed by Kharkov PET LLC.

Legally, PET LLC has existed for more than 28 years, but it did not immediately come to the publishing business, as evidenced by the full name of the company Byelektrotekhnika. According to YouControl, the company began printing activities only in 2011. At the same time, they started talking about it in the media

The Accounts Chamber found that during 2010-2011, all publishing houses, which were entrusted by the Ministry of Education with the publication of textbooks, ordered printing services from PET LLC. However, the company did not have sufficient production capacity and ordered printing from real printing houses, leaving 60-90% of the funds for itself. allocated for the publication of textbooks According to the Accounts Chamber, the cost of the technical base of “Pobutelektrotekhnika” at that time was 227 thousand UAH and was represented by two printing machines (sheet and roll), and the company staff consisted of 18 people, of which there were only two printers and two their assistant

At that time, the Ministry of Education was headed by Dmitry Tabachnik, who fled Ukraine after the victory of Euromaidan. In 2015, TSN correspondents tracked him down in the Israeli city of Netanya. It turned out that he lived in a luxurious apartment with Mikhail Shifrin, the permanent owner of PET LLC.

Mikhail Shifrin is a citizen of Israel. Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he has been constantly living in this Middle Eastern country. In an interview with local media, he talks about his new project - the publication of the Torah and other sacred Jewish books in Ukrainian, as well as about significant losses due to the Russian aggression According to him, as a result of a Russian missile attack on Kharkov, expensive equipment was damaged in his printing house

The printing house of PET LLC is located in the Kharkov Printing House - a complex of buildings where printing houses and editorial offices of local newspapers were located during the Soviet era. Now, of the state-owned enterprises, there is only one state-owned enterprise left here, SJSC Ukrvidavpoligrafiya. This complex of buildings was really seriously damaged by a Russian missile attack in July 2022

Update

The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine is initiating an official investigation into the purchase by the Institute of Modernization of Educational Content of textbooks for children with special needs at an inflated price. This is stated in a message from the press service of the Ministry of Education on Facebook.

There they received information that the Institute for Modernization of Educational Content, which is authorized to organize the examination and purchase of textbooks, entered into an agreement to purchase them at an inflated cost

The Institute for Modernization of Educational Content is a separate legal entity engaged in organizing the competition and purchasing textbooks and manuals for schools

The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine states that it strictly adheres to anti-corruption principles, so they are grateful to media representatives for drawing attention to possible violations