The New Ukrainian School (NUS) is a reform that was met with great expectations at one time. It was supposed to be a breath of fresh air for the outdated education system. But today NUSH is more like a sinking ship than a flagship of change. Instead of modern classrooms, there is a lack of textbooks, instead of teachers’ autonomy, there is a bureaucracy that stifles any initiatives. But for some reason, officials from the Ministry of Education and Culture continue to release new ideas like hotcakes, without doing any work on mistakes. Let’s analyze where our educational reform actually cracks and whether there is a chance to glue it together.
A system that did not live up to expectations
When the New Ukrainian School started in 2018, it became a symbol of hope for the renewal of Ukrainian education. New methods, more freedom for teachers and students, focus on competencies instead of dry cramming — all this sounded promising. But now, a few years after the start of the reform, we see a completely different picture: NUS is cracking at the seams, and each of these cracks reveals chronic problems of the system.
In general, the ill-fated educational reform can be safely compared to the cart from Krylov’s fable: the idea seems to be wonderful, but who is pulling it where. Lebid dreams of raising the reform to the heavens: modern methods, innovative technologies, space for creativity. The pike rushes into the water – to bureaucracy, checks and old approaches that drag the reform back. And cancer generally pulls towards inaction: “Let’s leave everything as it is, because we don’t want to change anything.” As a result, as in the fable, the cart stands still. And it includes Ukrainian schoolchildren who never received the promised high-quality education.
The swan symbolizes nothing more than the ambitions of NUS. The reform started beautifully: new teaching methods, integrated lessons, STEM laboratories, freedom for teachers. It all sounded like the same swan flight. But the reality turned out to be different.
The campaign to train the teachers of the future, or as they were dubbed in the Ministry of Education and Culture, “agents of change”, has been actively started. Distracted teachers were massively withdrawn from classes and sent to advanced training courses. Countless tutors and coaches, as it is now customary to call methodists, simply repeated, like a mantra, the specified information. I got the impression that at all levels, a series of measures were carried out “to check the box” – carried out and forgotten, and not with the aim of understanding, understanding and putting it into practice. No steps were taken to motivate teachers to take such courses.
It is interesting that in the institutions of higher education themselves, where future teachers are trained, outdated methods of training educators have not yet been reviewed and no educational program has been developed that would train specialists based on the Concept of the National Academy of Sciences.
As a result, the fact that 40% of teachers during the survey “New Ukrainian school in 5th-6th grades: challenges of implementation” could not explain the difference between NUSH and the previous approach to the educational process was discussed for a long time in society. But is it the fault of the teachers that only more new terms are added to the state standards each time, and the content itself has not changed for years? So we are huddled in one place, and the cart is still there. Without sufficient funding, equipment and training of teachers, the swan flaps its wings in vain, leaving real changes in dreams.
Pike is about love for paperwork and checks. Instead of freedom for teachers, there are endless reports, new instructions and orders that often contradict each other. Teachers spend more time on documents than on a creative approach to lessons. The pike stubbornly drags the reform to the bottom, where routine and fear reign. Caught in the grip of paper routines, excessive demands, oppressive responsibilities and low wages, teachers are leaving the profession en masse. There are currently 1,371 vacancies in one capital city alone. In the villages, the situation is much more complicated and there is a catastrophic shortage of teachers. There, one teacher is forced to conduct classes not only on his subject, but also on those in which he is not an expert. And all this affects the quality of education and also in the conditions of distance learning, when not all children have stable access to the Internet due to constant attacks.
And the specialists of the Ministry of Education and Culture, instead of solving the problem and trying to stop the outflow of personnel, gave teachers another “food for thought” in the form of a new professional standard. Like, you, the teachers, are simply not professional enough and have “slumped” education, as the Minister of Education and Science Oksen Lisovyi himself claims.
But, if we compare the purpose of the new standard with the previous one, we will see the following picture:
“The purpose of a teacher’s professional activity is to organize training and upbringing of students during their complete general secondary education (hereinafter referred to as education) by forming in them key competencies and worldview based on universal and national values, as well as intellectual, creative and physical development abilities necessary for successful self-realization and continued education”. (The text is taken from the new professional standard “Teacher of a general secondary education institution” – Ed.)
“The purpose of a teacher’s professional activity is to organize the education and upbringing of students during their full general secondary education (hereinafter referred to as education) by forming in them key competencies and worldview based on universal and national values, as well as the development of intellectual, creative and physical abilities , necessary for successful self-realization and continuing education”. (The text is taken from the professional standard for the professions “Teacher of primary classes of a general secondary education institution”, “Teacher of a general secondary education institution” “Teacher of primary education (with a junior specialist’s diploma), which has lost relevance – Ed.)
We see that students have been replaced with education seekers, and some definitions have been removed from the document altogether. They explain to the teacher how he should communicate, when and with whom during the performance of his duties, and also list what he is responsible for. Autonomy, as always, is conditional, because the selection of all the necessary materials must be discussed and agreed ten more times. And when does the poor teacher have to look for all the necessary and most useful materials, when studying just one such table of competencies and requirements will require more than one sleepless night after a full day of work? And in addition, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, supposedly trying to help, still wants to issue a whole package with a lot of questionnaires for self-assessment. This is probably during breaks, between checking notebooks, teachers have to fill them.
Continuous professional development is an important component of any profession, especially in conditions where the world and technology are changing rapidly. However, teachers often do not have the opportunity for full-fledged professional development, because it requires time and funding. Learning new methods, adapting to modern conditions requires investments that the educational system is not ready to make. This leads to the fact that teachers work according to old schemes, not keeping up with modern requirements, which only deepens the crisis of education. And constant visits to pedagogical courses are reduced to the usual boring lectures, which are repeated year after year and end with a standard test, which does not give an opportunity to really check the level of knowledge and skill of the teacher, but only adds more stress to the lives of teachers, who are already bogged down with problems.
And this approach throughout the reform process. In fact, the entire Concept of NUS is not much different from everything that was applied in education earlier. But at the same time, all the information is full of concepts incomprehensible to teachers, which were borrowed from foreign countries. We become observers of a sad process when reforms are simply imposed by force, and obedient teachers do not have the opportunity to express their expert opinion, gained over years of experience, to point out the strengths and weaknesses of the reform and teaching methods that are suitable for our students. Because teachers are simply used as silent performers, and not as important participants in the educational process.
It is still time to mention the changes to the evaluation of the educational achievements of students, which were introduced by the Ministry of Education and Culture, again, neglecting the opinion of teachers, who then have to carry out this evaluation. Let’s take for example the English language, a subject that had a special approach of evaluating 4 types of speech activity – listening, reading, writing and speaking. With the light hand of officials from the Ministry of Education and Culture, various skills were mixed and 3 groups of results were created, which partly echo and are also interpreted ambiguously. And the test of knowledge of grammar and vocabulary is generally removed as inappropriate. Current grades have ceased to matter at all. That is, a student can simply successfully write off several test papers and this is enough to establish the level of his knowledge. It is certain that such an approach will generally destroy the motivation of schoolchildren to study the subject, which, due to its peculiarity, is not easily given.
Recommendations for teaching subjects always fall on the heads of teachers like snow in the middle of a clear sky in the middle of September, and also with vague wording, which forces methodical associations to analyze their meaning for several more months.
Cancer in this reform symbolizes a part of the educational system that resists change. “It worked before, and it will work now.” This is about the lack of desire to develop and work differently. Outdated approaches, rigid methods that everyone seems to criticize, but in fact continue to apply, simply calling them modern English terms.
Every year, the educational community chooses the textbooks that should be used to teach schoolchildren. Every year, publishing houses reprint existing editions and quickly print new ones. The covers and the volume of pages change, but the content does not improve. Many textbooks are printed in flagrant violation of sanitary requirements. Let’s recall history textbooks for fifth graders. Well, it is unlikely that a 10-year-old child will remember all the material that is laid out like a scientific journal, with many texts not highlighted in any font and with almost no illustrations. And what can we say about foreign language textbooks, where there is not a page, but a whole set of words, as if taken straight from the dictionary, and in such a quantity that the students physically cannot remember. There are almost no practical exercises. And what is not a lesson is a new set of words.
In turn, the management system of education itself seems to put sticks in the wheels of the educational process, literally showering teachers with unnecessary reports and irrelevant measures. The Soviet system, which was based on papers and not on real results, still continues to exist in education. After all, this approach inhibits the freedom of teachers, carries out ineffective supervision over educational institutions, instead of full-fledged monitoring, with the aim of identifying problems and solving them.
Is there a chance to save the educational reform
The problem of NUSH is that all three heroes of the fable try to realize their own vision instead of working together. In order for the cart to move, a common goal, coordinated actions and movement of the entire team in the same direction are needed. MES specialists should stop making loud statements, but define real priorities and not get distracted by formalities. It is high time to understand what is more important: papers or children. It is necessary to give teachers the opportunity to simply do their work, focusing on learning, and not on “beautiful” reports.
As long as education is economized, it will remain a cart on three different directional draft animals. NUS is not the first reform that has encountered difficulties. However, its failure will be a blow to confidence in any changes in the future. If we now admit mistakes and focus on real steps, instead of creating a “picture”, then reform has a chance. Otherwise, NUS risks becoming another poor attempt to change the system, which has never felt it.
NUSH began as a reform that was supposed to bring Ukrainian education to a new level. But instead, it became another example of how good ideas collide with the realities of our system. Lack of funding, excessive bureaucracy, overworked teachers and ignoring the real needs of schools became the cracks that almost destroyed everything. But all is not lost, and the educational reform, which is still being discussed so actively, has a chance to be saved. NUSH can become a successful reform if Ukrainian education gives up another cart. She needs a strong and fast car that knows exactly where it is going. But for now, the swan, the pike and the cancer continue to pull each in its own direction, and our children remain in place in a rapidly developing world.
