Time for childhood: solution for Ukrainian school children abroad

Rubryka analyzed the intricacies of schooling in Ukraine and abroad, talked to the head of the Ukrainian Distance School, and gathered alternative solutions for children who want to simultaneously get a foreign and Ukrainian education.

Natalia is from Kyiv. At the beginning of March, she left with her two children for Estonia, where she is still staying. The woman's eldest daughter, Yeva, is 11 years old. In Ukraine, the girl studied in the fifth grade, was an excellent student, and played tennis professionally for seven years. But with the beginning of a full-scale war, the previous life had to be abandoned.

"When we arrived in Estonia, we first tried to study online at our school in Kyiv, expecting to return home quickly. Then it became clear that we needed to go to a local school. Estonia has laws that children must go to school.

We are in a small town near the sea. When my daughter and I came to school, she was the first Ukrainian child in the city; all the children came to get to know her. We were given a choice—to go to the Estonian or russian class. We had a principled position that in no case do we want the child to study in russian, and the daughter went to the Estonian class," Natalia says. 

At the same time, Yeva's education in a Ukrainian school continues online. Her mother says that she immediately rejected thoughts about giving the child only an Estonian education. The family prioritized studying Ukrainian history, language, and culture.

So they chose to have home-schooling or the so-called family form of education—the child learns the educational material in all subjects on their own or together with parents and then passes tests once every three months. It sounds good, but everything turned out to be much more difficult in practice, says Natalia.

"We decided to prioritize the study of language and literature in the Ukrainian school. We teach all other subjects at a minimum because my daughter is studying English, German and Estonian abroad. Grandma helps with mathematics and physics. Other subjects are at a minimum.

It is challenging to organize family education in our situation. I work full-time and have another young child. Yeva studies until 2 p.m., and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., she has tennis practice, so she does homework after 7 p.m. and somewhere until 9 p.m. Neither she nor I have the energy for family studies anymore.

During the testing period, teachers from Ukraine sent 12 test papers that had to be completed within three days. At the same time, Yeva did not want to miss Estonian school, because she learns everything in a foreign language anyway, so it is tough for her to catch up. She wrote all those tests, but she was under such severe stress that I simply did not recognize my daughter," Natalia shares.

As a rule, parents are most concerned about the issue of their child's being expelled from a Ukrainian school in case of going abroad. However, Ukraine's Ministry of Education reassures that the only reason for excluding a displaced child from school can be a request statement from the parents or guardians. It is written in the official explanation. It also says that even if a child has lost contact with their school and teachers, they are not just expelled but automatically transferred to the next grade at the beginning of the new school year. 

If a child missed an academic year and was studying abroad at that time, the student can be kept in the same class, and not transferred to the next, only at the parents' request. That is, all fears here are groundless.

Also, Ukrainian schools accept certificates of studies from any other European school. Minister of Education of Ukraine Serhii Shkarlet emphasized this:

"Today, there are no legislative or other restrictions regarding recognizing the results of a child's education in any country. However, there should be an official record of the educational program mastered by the child (along with the hours, which disciplines were studied, the assessment of knowledge in each subject, etc.)," ​​the minister said.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science calls the already mentioned family form of education the best solution for families who don't want to give up their Ukrainian school. It is enough to inform the class teacher or the school principal about the intention. 

But how to continue education if neither the family form of schooling nor the usual one suits the family? The ministry offers a solution created in December 2020—to join the All-Ukrainian Online School.

The format of the All-Ukrainian online school involves registration on a platform with video lessons for students of all grades and all school topics from 18 main school subjects. 

Also, the platform allows children to take tests and write independent and control papers. A child can independently create a schedule of their educational process on the platform. However, the resource was designed more as a structured database of educational materials. The student will not be able to communicate with the teacher.

Ukrainian Sunday schools operated in Europe even before the full-scale invasion. Their creators are the diaspora, which wants Ukrainian children living abroad to know their language and history. With the beginning of the escalation of the war, such schools began to expand.

In addition to lessons related to Ukrainian identity, children can communicate with Ukrainian peers. Such a solution will help to cope with homesickness and find friends who will understand the child's feelings.

However, even though this is a good solution, it's not universal. As a rule, the smaller the town, the less likely there will be a Ukrainian school.

Ukrainian Sunday school in the Japanese town of Nagoya.

An analog of such schools is the NGO Smart Osvita initiative, within which teachers teach Ukrainian subjects to children online. Training takes place every Saturday or weekday evening; the child can choose which class to join. In between lessons, students are asked to complete small homework assignments.

However, children studying abroad often need to learn the rest of the school subjects in Ukrainian. This happens due to an insufficient knowledge level of a foreign language. Especially if the child did not know French before, for example, and now has to study using it.

In late February, the Ukrainian Distance School was launched in Lviv. Training there is free, and the project itself is entirely voluntary. All school subjects are taught, assessments are conducted, and relevant study documents are issued. The school director, Marharyta Noskova, emphasizes that online and distance learning are different. And the team of this educational institution specializes in the latter. We will tell you more about the solution's format.

"We organized the work with the teachers so the students could study, complete tasks, study theoretical and practical material, and perform interactive exercises. It is normal to study thoroughly, but in a mode when it is convenient for them; when they can; when they have Internet; when there is an opportunity to simply join. And that's how we slowly started working," says director Marharyta Noskova.

Marharyta Noskova

A total of 3,500 students studied at the school during four months of study last academic year. Of them, more than 750 students graduated from their school. The rest either returned home or started studying in schools at their place of residence. 

"We had many children who stayed in the occupied territories or the zone of active hostilities. Since March, they joined and studied both in basements and under shelling. When we talked to them in short online consultations, we heard explosions. Parents wrote to us thanking us that their children, despite everything, are engaged and have the opportunity to break away from all these horrors, from which they escape in the subway or basements,"  Marharyta Noskova recalls.

Training takes place on the educational platform Moodle, which protects its users' data and allows them to perform practical tasks and go through theoretical material at any convenient time. 

The head of the Ukrainian Distance School says that teachers set specific time frames for passing the material and writing tests, but these frames are adjusted to the students. If the child joins the course at the end of the semester, they are given a few extra weeks to complete all the necessary tasks.

"Education can be organized so that children enjoy it. Distance learning can be qualitative; our school also contains testing. We have a full-fledged educational process—topics, semesters, and holidays. But the children know they have a specific time when they can join and listen to the teacher's more detailed explanation, ask them questions, and work in a group. We call it lessons because the children are used to it being a lesson.

The child has the opportunity to pass the control test once. But not on October 22 at 10 o'clock, but when the child reached this level. It could happen on November 22 or December 12. It doesn't matter. The child must perform it as the next stage of learning. Students have specific time limits according to the calendar. They know that the first semester ends on December 22, and we must complete the study material and the work by then. But this does not mean that on December 23, we will close everything and say, 'you lost your chance.'

80% of students will complete these tasks on time. And that 20% of students, as a rule, will not do it for good reasons. Therefore, we will create conditions for them to finalize it in January," explains Ms. Marharyta. 

Studying at the Ukrainian Distance School will also have to be combined with learning at a local school abroad. However, the child's schedule will become more flexible, giving them more free time. When the parents decide to return to Ukraine, they will receive certificates from both schools, with which they will return to their Ukrainian physical school.

The school management has no right not to credit these certificates or to send the child to take the program of the class they studied abroad in again. Although this is what many parents are afraid of.

How else can you organize a child's education abroad? It will not work if you leave the child solely on distance learning in a Ukrainian school. However, parents can count on the local school. Many parents make this decision considering how exhausting it can be for a child to study in two schools simultaneously. 

Viktoria left with her two children at the start of the full-scale invasion. Now they are in Poland. The younger child goes to kindergarten, and the older one studies only in a Polish school.

"My daughters were 5 and 7 years old when we left. One of the reasons for leaving was the desire to give the children a full-fledged education after two years of quarantine. From the first days of my stay, I purposefully took my eldest daughter to the local school. I did not even consider options with online torture.

In my bubble, it's normal for children to change schools and countries more than once with their parents for more than ten years. No one ever had a problem with this. A guy in my class who had studied in Germany for seven years had no issues. Therefore, after returning, I will take the Polish certificate at the end of the school year and take it to our Ukrainian school. We are in the European educational space, and European certificates should be recognized everywhere. And as a mother, it is crucial for me that my children remain children and have time for childhood," says Viktoria. 

She says that she studies the Ukrainian language and history with her children, and chooses Ukrainian books for them, so she sees no reason to worry about preserving national identity. But at the same time, the woman emphasizes that not all parents have such an opportunity. And in other cases, you have to look for new solutions. 

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