Education under the knife of austerity
Mykhailo Tsymbaliuk, Member of Parliament of Ukraine, Batkivshchyna, First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Social Policy and Protection of Veterans’ Rights
"Improving Access to and Resilience of Education in Crisis in Ukraine" – a good idea with a good title, the LEARN program.
It sounds as if it is about supporting children, teachers, and schools, about developing the system in times of war and instability. But it takes just a closer look into the handbook to understand that behind this beautiful cover hides a completely different goal.
When in December 2024 the Ministry of Education and the World Bank negotiated financing, few paid attention to the fine print. Namely, that the money is not given for free. It is tied to specific “development goals.” And these goals sound not like care for children, but like a clear plan for optimizing the school network – in other words, closing small rural schools.
The scheme looks very simple: in 2024 the education subvention formula was to be changed so that the minimum number of students per school would increase by 50%. This means that schools with fewer than 45 students become financially unnecessary. The state fulfills the condition – it gets 25 million dollars. In 2025, the bar rises even higher: a minimum of 60 students. Another 25 million. In total – 50 million dollars in loan funds in exchange for the actual destruction of hundreds of village schools.
And here is the most painful part. The Verkhovna Rada appealed to the Government demanding a review of one clause in the decree on education subvention – the one that concerns only the requirement of 60 students. In other words, the issue of schools with fewer than 45 students is not being reconsidered at all. For now, the aim is only to preserve schools with 45 to 60 students. Parliament admits that a school is not only a place of learning – it is also the center of community life, a symbol of statehood in the most remote village. Yet at the same time, the Ministry of Education signs a document where, in black and white, the condition is set: no cuts – no money.
This creates a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, the state officially declares that schools must be preserved because they sustain life in communities. On the other hand, the government team takes out a loan that directly requires getting rid of these schools.
Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi and his ministry present this as “optimization,” as a path to higher-quality education. But the truth is that for a small village, a school is the last bastion. Close the school – and that’s it, the community dies. People move away, children travel dozens of kilometers to neighboring districts, and the village turns into emptiness. Can this be called “improving accessibility”? Or is it, rather, pushing education further away from children? Of course, there remains the option of local budget funding, but the reality is that small communities simply lack the money.
In the new Cabinet there are figures who not only raise questions – they undermine the very foundations of the Ukrainian state. This applies, in particular, to the Minister of Education. After all, education shapes worldviews, and any revanchist or dubious approaches here strike directly at the country’s future. The effectiveness of any Minister of Education is best measured not by loud strategies or presentations, but by the number on a teacher’s paycheck. And if today that number remains humiliatingly low, then all the talk of “reforms” looks like empty declarations.
One billion hryvnias under this agreement has already been used. The remainder – another billion – depends on how quickly and harshly the ministry will cut small schools. In other words, Ukraine has effectively signed up to the destruction of hundreds of educational institutions in exchange for a 2-billion-hryvnia loan. Despite loud promises of modernization and support for education, in practice we see something else: funds will be spent, small schools will be liquidated, and the debt burden will fall on the shoulders of future generations, who will have to pay for the decisions of others.
Yes, international institutions always strive for “efficiency.” But we are at war. We cannot measure education only by numbers in tables. A school with twenty or thirty students is not “inefficient” – it is the guarantee that the village will live. It is the place where children have the chance to stay in Ukraine instead of fleeing from it.
In the end, we face a very simple question. What matters more to us: a World Bank loan, or the preservation of Ukrainian schools and communities? Because the price of the matter is written clearly in the document – 50 million dollars. It turns out that this is exactly how much the future of the Ukrainian village has been valued.
