Since the beginning of the war, there have been 612 fewer schools in Ukraine

Nadiia Kuzmychova, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine. Photo: Vitaly Nosach

Since the beginning of the full-scale war, the number of schools in Ukraine has decreased. At the same time, almost 84% of schools work full-time or in a mixed format.

Nadiia Kuzmychova, Deputy Minister of Education of Ukraine, said this in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.

According to her, at the end of the 2022/2023 academic year, 12,930 schools were operating in the country, and as of September 2024, only 12,268 were functioning.

She noted that many schools in regions such as Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kherson, and Mykolaiv regions suffered significant damage or were completely destroyed as a result of hostilities. At the same time, 879 schools are located in the temporarily occupied territories.

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«Since the start of hostilities, 3,524 educational institutions have been affected, of which 360 have been completely destroyed, which is 14.81% of all educational institutions,» the deputy minister said.

According to her, now almost 84% of schools work in full-time or full-time-mixed format. And about 14% of institutions are in distance format.

«There are areas where it is very dangerous to work even with shelter. Where the proximity to the front line will not even allow building a shelter,» Kuzmychova said.

We will remind that there are already 31 full-time schools in Mykolaiv.

Earlier, the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, Oksen Lisovyi, expressed concern that many children, especially boys, from the 10th-11th grades go abroad.

In addition, NikVesti reported that only one school from Mykolaiv — Lyceum №38 named after Volodymyr Dmytrovych Chaika, which ranked 193.

What about children's education in Mykolaiv?

Mykolaiv schoolchildren have been studying online since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation. Although the government, with the help of donors and the state, is actively setting up shelters in educational institutions, which sometimes causes indignation among the townspeople.

The refusal of children to go to school is a guarantee of their personal safety, because Mykolaiv is still in the zone of possible ballistic damage from the Russian military, says Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych. At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of preparing shelters and resuming education in schools when the Armed Forces move the front line.

Earlier, the head of Mykolaiv RMA Vitalii Kim explained why schools in Mykolaiv still work online: educational institutions are targets for the Russian army, since at the beginning of a full-scale war, they usually housed military personnel.

It is worth noting that earlier in response to an information request by NikVesti regarding the criteria that educational institutions of Mykolaiv must meet in order to resume full-time work in the 2023-2024 academic year, the city's education department reported: schools will work in accordance with the recommendations of the State Emergency Situations and Sanitary Regulations, approved by the Ministry of Health. The first is the availability of shelter, and the second is drinking water at school.

In the next few years, the authorities plan to equip 54 shelters in kindergartens, schools and lyceums in Mykolaiv.

In general, the outflow of students was recorded in Mykolaiv schools this year. Compared to the last academic year, the number of students decreased by 3,300.

Lithuania plans to build a shelter school in the Mykolaiv region by the end of 2024. Similar underground institutions should appear in 5 more regions of Ukraine.

As of February 2024, shelters were installed in 31% of schools in Mykolaiv. These are 21 institutions of general secondary education: 10 lyceums and 11 gymnasiums.