When the Minister Doesn’t Pull Himself: The Phenomenon of 30 Advisers in the Ministry of Educational Failures

The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, which is supposed to raise the level of education to international standards, has long been synonymous with misunderstandings, hasty decisions and constant failed experiments. And if a few years ago we were hoping for a reform that would make our education competitive, now we see yet another demonstration of systemic inadequacy. The modern MES, it seems, will eventually go down in history as an example of how one big problem can be turned into a whole gallery of small ones and confidently lead education into the abyss. The Minister of Education and Science, Oksen Lisovyi, formed a team of thirty advisers — an unprecedented number for any branch of state administration. However, education has not become more systematic and stronger, but on the contrary — with each successive innovation, it loses its support and increasingly causes public indignation.

Advisors for advisors

In accordance with data department of personnel support of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Minister of Education and Science, Oksen Lisovoy, formed an entire honor of 30 advisers – an unprecedented number for executive authorities. Most of them formally work on a public basis, but the costs of maintaining only full-time advisers in the period from 2023 to 2024 and during the first two months of 2025 reached 6.6 million hryvnias. This figure raises questions not only about the validity of the personnel structure, but also about the effectiveness of the use of budget funds at a time of systemic instability in the educational sphere.

Among them are persons well-known in the educational environment:

• Minister of Education and Science in 2016-2019 Lilia Hrynevych, who is remembered as the initiator of the main reform in education called “New Ukrainian School”. Mrs. Hrynevych during the years of her reforming activity was severely criticized for the lack of effective communication with teachers and communities, which often led to protests by teachers and parents due to misunderstanding or dissatisfaction with changes in the education system;
• Ivanna Kobernyk, who was also an adviser to Minister Hrynevych, and currently holds the position of adviser to the minister on the reform of the “New Ukrainian School”;
• Nina Sokolova, the head of the patronage service, who held the same position during the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Culture Lilia Hrynevych.

It seems that what could be better for solving the problems of education than 30 people, each of whom is enthusiastically ready to give “valuable” advice. And to make it even more interesting, most of these advisers are people who had experience working with education, but not in the field. Probably, that is why it is so difficult to imagine that these “great specialists” once actually stood in a classroom with children or at least taught for a year in any educational institution. Their ideas are brilliant, but have no practical application, because they exist in a vacuum of theory that has nothing to do with real life. As a result, we constantly get innovations that only make the situation worse. And it is strange that we are waiting for changes, while the personnel of the Ministry of Education and Science is only shuffled like that deck of cards, but does not change. The scene is the same, the people are the same, so we are stomping in one place.

However, the key question is how well this model—with dozens of advisors without clearly defined areas of responsibility—is up to the times. In a field that requires a focused, analytically verified course of action, the growth in the number of advisors did not lead to a strengthening of strategic integrity, but on the contrary, became a marker of managerial imbalance. In a situation where education is in a state of chronic turbulence, numerous consultations cannot be a substitute for concrete decisions.

Reforms that destroy, not build

Let’s start with the youngest. One of the ridiculous innovations from the Ministry of Education and Culture is the introduction of mobile kindergartens in buses, as well as plans to organize preschool education in the form of branches based in schools, universities, and even libraries. This is another experiment of the Ministry of Education and Science (MES), which seems to be only a forced reaction to the lack of places in kindergartens, demographic problems and economic difficulties. Now children have to learn next to schoolchildren and students, and traditional educational spaces for older people will turn into mixed ones. Although the reformers assure that the new system will solve the problem of places in kindergartens, the reality looks less rosy. Babies can find themselves in conditions that do not meet their needs: in constant noise and stress from the neighborhood with older children or adults. Parents risk not getting a place in a kindergarten, but a temporary “improvisation” where comfort and safety are out of the question.

Seemingly concerned about the excessive load on schoolchildren in the conditions of online education, experts from the Ministry of Education and Culture planned to remove, in their opinion, “unimportant” subjects from the compulsory subjects in 2027. Thus, with the implementation of the reform of the senior specialized school, students of grades 10-12 will have to study only 7 compulsory subjects, among which: Ukrainian language, Ukrainian literature, history of Ukraine, English language, mathematics, physical education and “Defense of Ukraine”. At the same time, subjects that have been cut, such as foreign literature, world history, civics, biology, ecology, geography, physics and chemistry, will no longer be compulsory. Representatives of the Ministry of Education and Culture assure that the reduction of disciplines does not mean their disappearance, as these topics can be integrated into other subjects, which, in their opinion, should simplify the educational process. However, instead, we observe how the school curriculum is filled with subjects such as “Happiness Lessons”, “Entrepreneurship and Financial Literacy”, “Protection of Ukraine”. Of course, each subject has its own value, but it is difficult not to pay attention to the absurdity of such a reform, which replaces the subjects that are the basis for the development of professional skills with less meaningful and abstract disciplines. Deleting physics or biology, which are key to future scientific and technical specialties, and replacing them with something superficial is, without a doubt, a backward step in the development of the educational system.

Gore-reformers also engaged in the “great restructuring” of professional education. And this is against the background of the fact that the ministry itself still does not have accurate data on the number of institutions it covers. During an interview with representatives of the Ministry of Education and Culture, the number 447 is heard once, the number 700 another time, and the discrepancies are even greater in different reports. And this is a clear confirmation that the system is actually uncontrolled. According to the new draft law, people without basic secondary education will have the opportunity to get professional education. This, of course, expands access to various specialties, but there is one big “but” – the risk of lowering the quality of specialist training. Basic education is the basis for further education, and its absence can make vocational training difficult. The idea of ​​introducing subventions from the state to local budgets to pay teachers and maintain the material and technical base sounds like something optimistic, but it will not be without disadvantages. Richer communities will be able to provide better conditions, but poorer ones will be left behind, further deepening educational inequality. In addition, this approach looks like the state’s self-removal from the problem in the typical style of “I don’t know anything, my house is on the edge”. The main thing is not to forget to write a report on time that everything is fine.

Here is another new stage of “intensive transformation”, as Deputy Minister of Education Mykhailo Vynnytskyi beautifully called it. Higher education is already undergoing changes: the Soviet organization of universities is, they say, a relic of the past. Now they plan to optimize the higher ones, reducing them to a hundred pieces. Officials of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, as usual, arrange another “optimization”, and now they are taking on the reduction of universities that do not meet their capacity standards with new zeal. We are uniting faculties, cutting funding — it still looks quite logical. Concentration of resources, raising of standards, fight against fake diplomas – it would seem, straight from the management textbook. However, behind these beautiful words hides a bitter reality: thousands of students lose the opportunity to get an education, and hundreds of teachers lose their jobs.

Of course, the big universities that survive this reform flurry will face another problem: overcrowding. Competition for budget places will become even tougher, groups of students will grow to sizes where an individual approach to everyone will become as unattainable as space travel. Optimization turns into a great way to save, but at the expense of the quality of education. Meanwhile, young people from small towns and villages will be forced either to go to megacities with more expensive education, or to refuse higher education altogether. As a result, diplomas will become even less affordable for those who do not have a financial cushion or the opportunity to leave their hometown.

And now we will consider one more “pleasant” side of the reform — the reduction of teachers. If a university closes, hundreds of scientists are out of a job. It is best when they are transferred to large institutions, but the worst is when they are forced to change professions or go abroad. In the conditions of war, when the country is already losing its intellectual potential, this process can have very sad long-term consequences.

The authorities claim that the reduction of higher education institutions is not only about saving, but also about improving the quality of education. Apparently, it is so for officials. But in practice, everything looks like a banal economy, where not only weak institutions go under the knife, but also those that simply ended up in the wrong place. If the reform continues at this pace, in a few years it will not be difficult to get a quality education in Ukraine. It will be a privilege for those who can afford to study in big cities. For the rest, courses, self-education or work without a diploma.

However, this creates danger not only for students, but also for the entire country. Ukraine, which is already struggling with the outflow of young people and professionals, risks further reducing the number of qualified personnel. After all, when the education system becomes less accessible, it inevitably affects the entire economy. But it is surprising that such a grandiose reform somehow missed one important little thing — academic integrity, which is considered an important element of education in Europe. The government, of course, already in 2023 approved the “voluntary” refusal of a scientific degree, but apparently they forgot to add some real incentive for this. It turns out that only three people took advantage of this opportunity – they are the Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi, the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Education and Science Serhiy Babak and another gentleman who wished to remain anonymous. Therefore, the “voluntary” refusal turned out to be not so voluntary, because there is no legal mechanism for punishment for abuse and reimbursement of budget costs for multi-year allowances for these scientific degrees. In civilized countries, suspicion of plagiarism is grounds for dismissal. But with us, such “candidates of sciences” not only do not resign, but also continue to receive cash supplements.

And what do we have in Ukraine? Buying dissertations has long become the norm: on some sites, you can buy a candidate’s thesis for 7-12 thousand DL, and a doctoral thesis for 15-25 thousand DL. And even plagiarism won’t hurt, because the performer cares about his reputation on the market. So, we get a real problem that no one is in a hurry to solve.

Teachers’ salary: “raised” to “lower”

One cannot ignore the situation with the teachers themselves, who in our country not only educate the future generation, but also work in poor conditions. Starting from 2023, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a resolution on the formation of a personnel reserve of teachers to work in the de-occupied territories, but it is not known how this reserve will work. Neither the terms of stay in the reserve, nor the terms of payment for teachers who remain without a load, have been determined. The situation is especially difficult for men who find themselves on the verge of mobilization, and it is not clear how the state is going to solve this issue.

But the worst part is that there is already a catastrophic shortage of teachers in Ukraine. According to experts, from 2024 there will be a significant shortage of teachers in the following areas:

• primary classes: 19,000 in cities, 11,000 in villages. teachers;
• natural sciences: in cities — 4.4 thousand, in villages — 0.1 thousand;
• mathematics: in cities — 2 thousand, in villages — 1.4 thousand. teachers

There is a particularly acute shortage of teachers in the front-line regions, such as Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhya, Odesa, and Mykolaiv. If the forecasts are to be believed, by 2030 our country may lack about 366,000 teachers.  And all this against the background of terrible financing of education, which leaves teachers in a real beggar’s position. Not only does the salary not match a teacher’s level of responsibility, it actually forces them to work multiple jobs to make ends meet for themselves and their families.

This, of course, not only drives away talented people from this profession, but also exhausts those who still remain in the system. Teachers, frustrated by low salaries and difficult working conditions, cannot perform their work properly, which immediately affects the quality of education. As a result, the system suffers, and teachers leave the profession en masse, because hard work in itself turns into a morally and financially exhausting and completely thankless path.

While 30 advisers advise and make amendments, teachers and lecturers sit on meager salaries, which are often talked about at all levels, but nothing is done to change the situation. And this is another one of those wonderful initiatives that benefit educational reforms: to “raise” teachers’ salaries. And now, it turns out that actually raising wages is just the perfect way to “not raise” them again in reality. After all, when you are promised to be “raised”, and then additional burdens are pushed on you without real money, then you can not expect that it will give the desired result.

As you can see, all these small, microscopic “improvements” and “reforms” are intended, perhaps, to create the appearance of change, but in reality they are only PR actions. If 30 councilors had to change something, their proposals look, to put it mildly, ineffective. And if their goal is real progress, it is not entirely clear why they chose to use the method of reduction and destruction instead of development and support.

With each such unsuccessful reform, the impression is increasingly created that these 30 advisers in the Ministry of Education and Culture, as if from Leonid Glibov’s fable of the pike, the swan and the crab, are trying to pull the cart in different directions, hoping that something useful will come out of it. These senseless initiatives, constant cuts and chaotic reforms look like the “joint work” of three completely different forces, which seem to want to achieve the goal, but instead only confuse the situation. It is unlikely that the system can be changed for the better if each of these advisers pulls the trigger in their own way, and the end result is one big mess that becomes more and more difficult to understand every year.

At a time when the country is forced to save on the basic, and thousands of teachers work on the verge of physical and moral exhaustion, the costs of maintaining an expanded corps of advisers look not only unreasonable, but also cynical. If, in the conditions of full-scale war and financial instability, the key management decision in the field of education becomes the multiplication of advisers, this is evidence not of strengthening, but of a deep management crisis. Given this model, one gets the impression that the minister is not so much managing as collecting advice. Ironically, it seems as if without 30 advisers, he is simply unable to make a single decision on his own. But the problem is that collective advice is not a substitute for professional leadership, especially when education does not stand still, but rapidly degrades.