Money for school: how parents can check purchases at the expense of the budget

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The new school year has started. At the end of August, the Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi said that most children should start it offline – of course, if there is an equipped shelter. For many, returning to school or kindergarten is not complete without requests to hand over money. “We need to collect 700 hryvnias for classroom repairs very quickly, because the school’s “admission” is in August,” “3,000 hryvnias for shelter” – real stories from parents on social networks. But schools and kindergartens have to be repaired and generally provided from the local budget. How to check what has already been purchased at an educational institution? What else will they buy? And what did the school ask for funds for? We will tell you how to figure it out. For purchases – on Prozorro You can see on Prozorro: what was ordered from your school or kindergarten. For example, what furniture should be brought, what should the contractor do during the repair of the shelter, under what conditions will food be organized; How much will it cost; who from the business won the contract. For example, this summer officials of the local authorities in Dnipro were served with suspicion in the case of fraud in the purchase of furniture. Desks that did not meet the requirements were brought to the school – but the goods were accepted and paid for. Damages are estimated at approximately UAH 3 million. When parents know exactly what to bring or how to make repairs, they can quickly spot a discrepancy – and sound the alarm. To search for the necessary purchases, you can use: EDRPOU of the local education department EDRPOU of the school, if it conducts purchases independently, the name and address of the school The easiest option is to filter the order by the EDRPOU code on Prozorro. You can also filter by year or sort by publication date to see only the most recent purchases. The image shows a fragment of the procurement search page on Prozorro. In order to see the order of the Podilsky District Education Department in Kyiv, we entered its code EDRPOU in the Customer filter. Another way is to select purchases in the BI Prozorro analytical module. It looks a little more complex, but there are more different filters, you can load data into one table, view charts and information about suppliers, etc. There, we advise you to select “12. Procurement stage (2022-2023)”, and then “Tenders/Lots”. How to access the “Tenders/Lots” sheet in the “12. Procurement Stage (2022-2023)” application of the analytical module. On the right side of the screen, you will see the most popular filters – expand the list to see them all. You can limit tenders by time from below. All the filters you choose will appear in the top panel. On the top right, you’ll also find some basic instructions to help you get started with this tool. To save the table for yourself, right-click on it and select “Download as”. The picture shows the “Tenders/Lots” sheet. Filters for the year 2023 and the customer are installed here (in the module this filter is called the Organizer). In addition, you can use the name or address of the school to search – try specifying them in the filter by the name of the lot. This data will help to narrow down the selection of procurements of the Department of Education, as well as to find those contracts that have been awarded by other institutions. For example, the installation of a panic button in a kindergarten in the village of Prolisky in the Kyiv region was purchased by the Department of Humanitarian Development and Community Health Protection. And the shelter of a kindergarten in the village of Krasne Pershe was purchased by the executive committee of the Obukhov City Council. What should be paid attention to in tenders: characteristics of goods and conditions of services and works. For example, what dishes should be prepared by the contractor who won the order for children’s meals. Please note that the less detailed the requirements for ordered goods, services or works are, the higher the probability of receiving something of poor quality. However, too detailed a description may indicate that the criteria have been adjusted for a specific supplier; prices At the same time, you should be careful when you compare them with prices on the Internet – the price of the contract may include delivery, deferred payment, or something else; contract performance period. When should the contractor complete the repairs or bring new books? You can learn the basics of how public procurement generally works now, what are the procedures and rules, in one of our materials. You can see whether the order has already been paid for on the Spending portal. You also need to install a filter there – select the necessary payments using the EDRPOU code of the person who spends budget funds on an educational institution. Even more information – on request There may not be an accessory or repair purchase yet on Prozorro – but it should be done in the future. To find out what expenses are planned for the following months of the year, it is worth writing a request for public information. It should be sent to the school or the Department of Education, depending on who will conclude the contract. The request can be made on the “Access to the truth” portal or using templates. Also, sometimes in response to the question why certain needs of the school should be discounted, parents hear that “no money is given from the budget” or “the city/village has no funds.” The local budget really cannot cover all requests at once. But if the need is really urgent, it has a higher priority. And here it is worth finding out whether the school or kindergarten even asked to allocate funds for it. Educational institutions prepare budget requests before each new budget year: there they list how much money they need and why. It happens that the heads of schools and kindergartens do not indicate all the needs of the institution in such requests: they rely on the help of parents, do not believe that they can allocate money, or simply do not know how to plan expenses correctly. But without honest and correct budget requests, the education department may simply not learn about the needs. And, accordingly, will not allocate budget funds for them. Information about educational institution requests can also be obtained through a request for public information. A better way to give money You can make a financial contribution to support a kindergarten school – if you want. But it should be completely voluntary. Not because of the demand of the parent committee, not voluntarily-compulsorily, but precisely because of your own desire. One secure way to do this is to transfer funds to the treasury account of the educational institution, local authority or department of education. You can specify the specific purpose of the payment: for example, for the repair of the gymnasium of school #2. This money will also be spent through Prozorro. How else can you help the school and contribute to the allocation of funds for school needs, we have described in a special guide for parents. And if you have suspicions that there is corruption in procurement, or questions about how to better monitor them – contact DOZORRO. Daryna Synytska, journalist of the DOZORRO TI Ukraine project, specially for UP. Life The publication was prepared with the support of the USAID / UK aid project “Transparency and accountability in public administration and services / TAPAS”. Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.

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