Ukraine’s digital ministry prepares financial assistance for citizens aiming to study English on Future Perfect program

The Ministry of Digital Transformation launched the Future Perfect program to promote learning English.

To help the program learners, the ministry plans to introduce financial assistance in the format of "YeSupport."

What is the problem?

The Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said that Ukraine conducted large-scale research on the knowledge of English among Ukrainians, which showed that 68% of respondents have some knowledge of at least one foreign language.

Photo: Forbes.ua

More than half of interviewees want to improve their knowledge, and 93% of parents support their children learning English.

Society realizes that it is necessary to know English. Parents understand that they need to teach their children English more effectively, emphasized Fedorov.

The ministry also studied how to get more Ukrainians to start learning English, how to motivate them and find the right tools.

What is the solution?

Ukraine has to change its approach to secondary education and high school so that children learn English more actively.

The government has to introduce tools to boost English learning, and improve the skill level of teachers so that they can teach English more vigorously.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation has launched the nationwide Future Perfect program to support the draft law on granting English the status of an international language.

How does it work?

We are preparing financial assistance for all Ukrainians to learn English in the format of eSupport (state financial program).

A similar project was implemented with COVID certificates, when Ukrainians bought books and went to gyms in exchange of their vaccination approval, the Deputy PM said.

As part of Future Perfect, English learning for children will become compulsory from kindergarten.

This is a fundamental transformation of the education system, because we need to train teachers who will teach preschool students. It is necessary to change the tariff scale, salaries, and the learning process, the minister added.

Photo: Forbes.ua

Fedorov announced free training programs to be provided for teachers to gain access to quality education and professional development. One of the goals is for every school to have a net speaker who will teach online or offline.

English will also become mandatory in public. Government workers must learn English more actively to communicate with foreign allies.

Two specific tools are currently available under the Future Perfect program.

• The first is the Empower online platform of the University of Cambridge, which is available to all Ukrainian universities.
• The second is Promova, a personalized language learning platform developed by Genesis, one of the largest Ukrainian product companies. This tool is available to everyone. The platform provides Ukrainians with free Premium access to all language courses for three years.

Of course, Ukrainian is the first, most important and only language. But to achieve our goals, we need to communicate with our partners in English. Therefore, it is very important to make English and this project part of pop culture, Fedorov summarized.