Ukraine is implementing the School Offline strategy to ensure the safe return of 300,000 students to full-time education. The plan includes adaptation for different categories of students, construction of shelters, and preservation of teachers' jobs. This was announced on Monday by Mykhailo Fedorov, Deputy Prime Minister for Innovation, Education, Science and Technology Development - Minister of Digital Transformation, UNN reports.
We plan to return 300 thousand schoolchildren to safe offline learning by the end of the year
Context
According to the Deputy Prime Minister, the Ukrainian education system has been suffering losses over the past 4 years. Due to COVID-19 and the full-scale war, our children are lagging behind their peers from other countries by 2 years of study, according to the PISA-2022 study. "Right now, we need to make decisions to reach a new level of education quality and not lose a generation," the official said.
According to him, more than 600,000 children in Ukraine study remotely and another 390,000 study abroad. "Online education does not allow children to socialize and develop soft skills. During blackouts, children cannot continue to study. Also, it is impossible to control whether students go down to the shelters during distance learning," said Fedorov.
How they plan to change the situation
"To change the situation, the Ministry of Education and Science is implementing a comprehensive School Offline strategy. It will start operating on September 1, and its implementation will be gradual. The goal of the Offline School is to return 300,000 students to safe face-to-face learning. And where face-to-face learning is not possible, it is to improve the quality of distance learning," Fedorov explained in more detail.
According to him, the offline school has five main components that cover the needs of different categories of students and teachers:
- Internally displaced children will study at the place of residence in person, provided there are security conditions.
- For children abroad, we remove the double workload. Students used to study at a foreign school in the morning and then study remotely in Ukraine in the afternoon. Now they will study remotely only subjects with a Ukrainian component, and the points for other subjects will be transferred from foreign schools in all classes.
- It is important to keep students from the temporarily occupied and frontline territories in the Ukrainian education system, we are fighting for every student. It is necessary to adapt education to the needs and conditions of students from the TOT. Therefore, children will be taught individually, adjusting to the needs and schedule of each child.
- The basis for returning children to school is infrastructure. That is why we are building shelters, buying buses and providing devices.
- At the same time, no teacher should lose his or her job. Any changes in the school network will not affect the actual employment of teachers - the Ministry of Education and Science will provide an opportunity to move to the personnel reserve, where they will receive an average salary and special training. From the reserve, teachers can move to another school or have a guaranteed job in the de-occupied territory.
"In a few days, we will launch a hotline where you can get answers if you can't find them on the website," said Fedorov.
У школах в Україні працює понад 400 офіцерів безпеки, ще 200 проходять навчання29.02.24, 10:00