The new Ukrainian school: how to restore the reform

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After almost 3 years of the school reform pause, the appointment of the new Minister of Education creates a lot of expectations from him. Where exactly to start, which of dozens of directions to take, how to combine “fighting fires” and ensuring access to secondary education during a full-scale war and continuing (restoring) systemic school reform? We would like to offer some thoughts on this. Their starting point is the thesis that during the years 2020-2022, the reform of the National Academy of Sciences due to a lack of political leadership and motivation lost momentum and moved according to inertia. In short, now is the time to stop, evaluate what has been done (and not done) according to the reform implementation plan, find out what the state is in each of the main directions of the reform, conduct a needs assessment and update the plan for its implementation. The changes envisaged by the reform of the National Academy of Sciences and outlined in the Concept of reforming secondary education related to the content of education and teaching methods, the organization of the educational process and school management, ensuring the quality of education and the management system of secondary education in general. In order to create a system of secondary education that will be able to provide universal and equal access to quality education, the following steps were necessary: ​​thorough retraining of teachers (including the reform of pedagogical education), creation of new state education standards, educational programs and educational and methodical materials, introduction of an ecosystem of provision the quality of secondary education – from the relevant State Service at the national and regional levels to the systems for ensuring the quality of education in each school, the creation of a safe, comfortable and stimulating educational environment in each school, including technical means for learning and laboratory equipment. Also, for this purpose, it was planned to change the way in which decisions are made in secondary education – both at the school level and at the level of the community and region. The main idea was to redirect accountability – instead of subordination to the vertical of government officials of the Ministry of Education and Culture – the regional department of education – the district department of education, schools should be accountable to local authorities, and through them – to the communities to whose residents they provide services. Emphasis on the responsibility of communities for the availability and quality of education meant, in particular, the renewal of the community of directors and a serious reorganization of the educational network. The demand for universal access and meeting quality standards meant that every school had to be capable, and in practice local authorities were faced with an urgent need to create capable anchor schools instead of more small schools. In each of these areas of reform, it is now necessary to determine what was implemented from the planned and where to move further, based on the Concept of the National Academy of Sciences and taking into account the new circumstances in which the Ukrainian school currently exists. Content of education and teaching methods The transition of school reform from primary to basic school involves the involvement of a whole new cohort of teachers, who were previously (with the exception of teachers of foreign languages ​​and informatics) affected by NUS to a lesser extent. The training of subject teachers for work in the 5th grade of NUS fell during the period of the global pandemic of COVID-19 and full-scale war, which were accompanied by a reduction in education expenditures and organizational and security challenges. So it started close to the beginning of the school year and was quite short. In order to more effectively carry out retraining of subject teachers to work in accordance with the principles of NUS, it is important to investigate their values, approaches to teaching and working conditions. Ukraine should join the TALIS international teacher survey, but the deployment of school reform requires more specific teacher surveys. It is appropriate to include in such studies not only surveys of teachers, but also observations of their work, because there is a risk that teachers during surveys will give answers that, in their opinion, are expected of them and are correct, but differ from actual practice. A separate challenge for the reform is the reduction of inequality in educational outcomes. The Ministry of Education announced the study of educational losses due to a full-scale war should take into account the specifics of the impact of war on vulnerable groups and previous educational inequality. Inequality between students of different types of schools and settlements is evidenced by the results of external examinations and the PISA study. It is important that the gap in learning outcomes already exists among primary school students – this is shown by the study of reading and mathematical competences conducted by the National Educational and Scientific Research Institute, and the monitoring of the effectiveness of the implementation of the NUS. However, there are still no studies that would clarify the reasons for such inequality and identify factors that affect educational results. Without examining whether the lower educational outcomes of students from rural and/or comprehensive (as opposed to selective) schools are caused by the level of education of parents and their profession, family well-being, level of teacher training, educational environment, expectations of students, or more precisely, how each of these and other factors related to learning outcomes, it is impossible to develop and implement an effective policy to reduce educational inequality. In 4 years, the implementation of the third stage of NUS at the level of specialized secondary education should begin. Although the work on the state standard for this level of secondary education continues, there is still no approved Concept of specialized secondary education, which would determine the peculiarities of the functioning of lyceums, the ratio of compulsory, specialized and optional subjects, the way of forming curricula, requirements for teachers, etc. Changes made to the Law of Ukraine “On Comprehensive General Secondary Education” (reduction of the minimum number of classes per parallel to 2, the possibility of combining lyceums with primary schools and gymnasiums, the right to create lyceums in any community) endanger the implementation of the tasks set by the Concept of the National Academy of Sciences to a specialized school. Since this level of education, according to the NUS Concept, was supposed to undergo almost the biggest changes, it is important to decide in advance on the design of the reform of specialized secondary education, prepare the necessary legislation and communicate future changes to local authorities, educators, parents and students. Read also: Senior school: will the lyceum reform be rolled back? Organization of the educational process and school management, ensuring the quality of education. It is necessary to investigate how democratic and participatory the management of Ukrainian schools is. The NUS provides for a transparent, competitive and democratic selection procedure for school principals and their change, but we do not know what management practices actually exist in schools, what management style is characteristic of principals – both those appointed after the reform and those who remain in office for a longer period of time. whether they have management and leadership skills to implement the reform. It is also necessary to study the extent to which schools are autonomous – academically, personnel and financially, in order to take effective measures to increase the capacity for self-management, development and cooperation with parents and the community. An important component of the deployment of the infrastructure for quality assurance of secondary education should be the study of these practices at the school level and their compliance not only with the letter, but also with the spirit of the reform. It is necessary to understand whether there are effective tools to protect all members of the school community from bullying, violence, including gender-based, discrimination, and what schools need to introduce or improve them. In particular, it is necessary to study whether teachers share the values ​​of equality, inclusiveness, non-discrimination, or understand the need to protect human rights. The working conditions of teachers also need attention. Their workload has increased significantly – they are often forced to work simultaneously in remote and face-to-face formats, with children who are abroad, during power outages, etc. At the same time, the amount of funds for salaries has decreased, and the outdated, Soviet system of calculating salaries does not protect teachers sufficiently, while limiting their pedagogical autonomy. This system needs to be reformed immediately, in particular, to reduce the share of allowances and supplements in the salary and to reduce the list of regulated activities that are paid additionally, although they are an integral part of the work of teachers. If possible, it is necessary to implement the norms of the Law “On Education” regarding the amount of teachers’ salaries. It is also necessary to return to the debureaucratization of the teacher’s work and school management. To do this, it is worth studying the working conditions of teachers and business processes in the school and find ways to simplify them without losing the quality of education and accountability. Educational Environment Creating a stimulating, safe and inclusive educational environment in every school requires significant resources. Now it is necessary to assess the condition of school premises and classrooms, in order not only to calculate how much money is needed for the equipment of classrooms for each subsequent year of NUS, as has been the case since the first year of the reform, but also to understand the condition of the educational infrastructure in general. Despite the fact that the maintenance and equipment of schools is the responsibility of the founders, that is, local authorities, there is enough evidence of problems with the material and technical support of the educational process. In addition, the educational environment in schools has been damaged during hostilities and temporary occupation, and it is necessary not only to rebuild or repair the premises, but also to refurbish classrooms, sports halls, canteens, etc. with furniture, equipment and teaching equipment. In view of this, it is important that the government pays attention to this problem, at a minimum, in terms of assessing the current state, calculating the needs, finding resources to meet them (in addition to local budgets) and coordinating efforts to ensure that every school without exception has an educational environment , which meets the standards of safety, hygiene, inclusiveness and allows the implementation of the state standard of secondary education. A strong school network Government and local authorities have been working to address the problem of ineffective school networks, including schools that lack the capacity to provide quality education, since the devolution reform that provided the tools to change the school network. However, we still have not come close to solving it, although the situation has gradually improved. Was progress fast enough in creating capable school networks in communities, which is what local authorities and schools need in order to achieve the goal of providing every child, regardless of where they live, access to quality education and leisure time – now it is necessary to update information on the state of school networks and make efforts to their planning, especially in the context of creating a network of specialized lyceums. Assessment and monitoring of the current state of affairs and the effectiveness of the implementation of the NUS reform, as well as updating and clarifying its vision, should form the basis of updating the plan of measures for the implementation of the Concept of implementation of state policy in the field of general secondary education reform “New Ukrainian School”. This document does not contain detailed steps for the preparation of the reform of basic and specialized secondary education, does not take into account the challenges of a full-scale war, and does not contain measurable goals and performance indicators. We recommend the Ministry of Education and Culture to prioritize work on updating the action plan for the implementation of the reform of the National Academy of Sciences. At the same time, it is very important to do this in a balanced way – based on research and data. Iryna Kogut, an associate analyst at Cedos, specially for UP. Life Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.

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