WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE PRE-SCHOOL EDUCATION IN UKRAINE?

Photo: kpio.udpu.edu.ua

Preschool education in Ukraine is frankly underfunded. 28.2 billion UAH for a year – it is about 21.5 thousand UAH for one child per year, or about 88.7 thousand UAH per one worker of a pre-school education institution. And this is including payroll tax, utility fees and so forth.

The overcapacity demonstrates that Ukraine needs about 3000 of institutions of preschool education additionally.

The composition of personnel of pre-school education institutions, where the number of teaching staff is significantly less than the number of technical personnel (only 44%), is alarming.

The gender distribution of teachers in pre-school education is one of the major concerns. Thus, 98.7% of teachers in Ukraine are female, and among 11304 kindergarten supervisors only 7 are male, among 4746 guidance counselors only 3 are male.

Serhiy Babak

Head of educational programmes

Ukrainian Institute for the Future