Education is a constant process. As life changes and issues challenges, science makes tremendous strides, and the younger generation demands improved teaching methods, the entire state education system should march abreast of time. Kyiv regularly holds educational fairs in order to discuss the burning issues of national education, exchange experience, and familiarize people with various innovations.
This year’s 11th International Educational Fair, “The Current Education System in Ukraine,” was held in Kyiv’s Palace of Children and Youth from last Wednesday to Saturday. Among its participants were approximately 600 educational institutions as well as businesses and research facilities that cooperate with the education system.
It is crucial to familiarize the public with the problems of education and research in order to discover what students want and satisfy the requirements of society. There are many problems that cannot be solved without assistance from independent experts, members of civic organizations, and civic councils. This is one of the main directions in the work of Ivan VAKARCHUK, Minister of Education and Science, who provided details about the development of the educational sector in 2008 in the following interview with The Day.
What are the top-priority problems that your ministry is currently addressing?
“The ministry has set itself several equally important priorities for this year. One of them is the introduction of independent evaluations of school-leavers’ achievements to bring the entrance test system in line with that of other European countries, including post-Soviet ones. In order to successfully conduct this assessment, we need UAH 52 million for the first stage and the same amount for the second one. As for independent assessments in the Crimea, it was decided that in the 2008-09 transitional period school graduates who have gained a general secondary education in an ethnic-minority language may have their tests translated into that language, except for the test on Ukrainian language and literature.
“Another priority in our work is expanding the autonomy of higher educational institutions. This concerns the introduction of reforms in line with the Bologna Process documents that were signed by Ukraine, which provide for autonomy for institutions of higher learning. A university is supposed to teach, conduct research, and disseminate knowledge, rather than conduct entrance exams. So we should broaden university autonomy in this direction. To be more precise, the Ministry of Education can already delegate to universities such things as awarding degrees and financial autonomy (enabling university presidents to solve some financial problems via special funds in line with the current law). Autonomy should also extend to the variative part of curricula: in other words, once-small funds can be essentially enlarged for this purpose, in line with research development requirements. As for autonomy of universities, I think this kind of vertical control - from the ministry down to the educational institution - stifles the initiative of university executives and does not improve education itself.
“The next priority is education management. I think this should be done by both the state and the public, rather than by the state alone. We can also speak about the state and civil society’s joint efforts to provide a proper level of education funding. The point is that we should all be interested in providing young people with a high-quality education.
“The next direction of our work is research. Unless we take definite steps today to revitalize those scientific schools that remain, they are bound to disappear. I would like to place special emphasis on the need for access to information: all the world’s scientific and scholarly journals should be made available to our academics. There should also be adequate funding of experimental schools, above all in the natural sciences, such as biology, physics, chemistry, etc. Another acute problem is the procurement of research instruments. If these schools are properly equipped to conduct experimental research, they will naturally be of high scientific value. Without instruments, there will only be primitive research to which the very word ‘science’ will be inapplicable. So our research facilities need expensive modern instruments. We should choose several strong universities where research is still going on and support their development.
“Another thing: young people who work at these research schools should be encouraged to go out and publish their studies not only in publications that are read by the authors and a handful of other individuals. They should be encouraged to contribute to prestigious publications. It is also necessary to give financial support to those academics who want to show their research to the world. If we solve these three problems, this will engender stable, if not rapid, growth of research in Ukraine in previously highly-developed fields. This will be done with the aid of special funds to be approved by the Verkhovna Rada. We have already submitted our proposals.
“Another extremely important problem is textbooks, i.e., the foundation of learning. Obviously, in order to teach effectively schools and universities should employ excellent lecturers and professors. But apart from them, there should be textbooks that, on the hand, reflect scientific achievements and, on the other, are written in a way that a student can easily grasp the content. The same applies to higher schools: within five years, textbooks should bring the graduate to the cutting edge of the science in which s/he is majoring. This is a question not only of funds but authors - not everyone will venture to write a textbook because this is a great responsibility. I think that creating high school textbooks is an art because their content instills a certain world outlook in the student. It is easier to create a textbook for higher schools, which reflects the latest scientific achievements: the author is dealing with a motivated reader, i.e., a university student, who is shown a shortcut to the cutting edge of science. In addition, the selection of and competition among textbooks also raises the problem of transparency: why did one textbook win the competition and not another one? Naturally, all this requires funding, and the funds that are now being earmarked for textbooks are insufficient because their prices are constantly going up. We are now trying to allocate enough money to produce a sufficient number of textbooks in Ukraine.”
You mentioned the problem of shaping the outlook of high school students. Is the ministry planning to introduce Christian ethics into the curriculum of general secondary schools? What is the ministry’s attitude?
“I think this matter needs to be discussed, and not at the level of the minister and his deputies. I would like to stress again that education should be run by the state and the public. This is one of my firm standpoints. Naturally, in raising children, we should not reject what humankind has accumulated over the millennia. It is the public, not just the government, which should define what ‘Christian ethics’ is. Naturally, the churches of all denominations are separate from the state, but they are here in this state, and churchgoers are citizens of Ukraine. So we must be aware that the question of raising children requires cooperation. The state should maintain standards, but at the same time we should be cooperating with the churches of all denominations. This is my fundamental principle. I think we will eventually introduce the teaching of Christian ethics so that the entire society is convinced of the necessity of such a course. We must take into account that there are different people. Parents who send their children to school have the right to demand that the state ensure respect for their faith, and it is immoral to resort to coercion here.”
What do you think of the proposals by civic organizations to introduce tolerance classes in schools?
“The ministry has not issued any instructions to conduct these kinds of classes. When a teacher comes into the classroom, he greets the children and wishes them good - is this not an element of tolerance? But if the teacher just forces the pupils to cram information about what tolerance is, this will be coercion pure and simple, and will provoke resistance. You can even teach tolerance during mathematics classes by telling the students about the lives of people who advanced science, about historical heroes. It is not necessary to devote a certain time to the subject of tolerance. We must always strive to help those who have less than us, those who are weaker, or who need something. Teachers should educate young people with their own vision of the world.”
There is already a private education sector in Ukraine. In what way is the ministry going to cooperate with private secondary and higher schools?
“There is a relevant law for this. Parents and children have the right to choose an educational institution of a certain form of ownership. I see no problems here except for the problem of quality of educational services. The people who set up a certain institution saw prospects. If they are serious people, they assessed all the risks: they saw themselves 10 years later; they imagined their graduates. They had to foresee the risks when they began to launch the project. But if they establish an educational institution for a year or two, it will just grind to a halt on its own.”
How long do you think it will take to implement all the priorities you mentioned?
“Reforming education is not a one-time job. There should always be reforms because research is conducted every day, the system of teaching is improving, and the requirements of young people are changing. And the question is not about changing the law every day. What we should do is monitor the changes, challenges, and risks in society in a period when there are stable laws and we can work within their limits. We must bring these small changes to fruition. How long will this take? Independent assessment has already been introduced this year. Naturally, it will take a year or two for this to assume a generally acceptable shape. There is so much talk now about the quality and transparency of tests. We are going to monitor all the issues and introduce changes, if necessary. It is important that we have already taken up independent evaluation in line with a 2005 presidential decree and that we have our own vision of how to legalize this procedure.
“As for the joint efforts of the state and the civil society, there is a long way to go: society should understand that it is supposed to take an active part in teaching young people. Everybody is responsible for this. The public must eventually become aware of this. As for research development, this sector needs substantial funding. I hope our pattern will work. Next year we will see where there is a need to invest more funds. I think other educational institutions will also opt for the research schools that we are supporting. As for textbooks, there is also a long way to go here. There is a problem of Ukrainian-language textbooks in schools that teach children of ethnic minorities. This is a very important issue, and it explains why school-leavers in the Crimea are unwilling to undergo independent assessment in Ukrainian. The thing is, they are simply not taught Ukrainian there, so this is why they don’t know the language. All children are quite capable, and if they had had an opportunity to study Ukrainian, they would have learned it. This raises the problem of staffing availability, textbooks, and teachers’ motivation. Besides, it is an entirely different problem to publish a Ukrainian-language textbook for Russian-, Romanian-Moldovan, and Hungarian-language schools. We discuss all these problems almost every day.”
How can the problem of bribery in higher schools be solved?
“This problem cannot be solved by issuing an order. I will tell you about my experience when I was the rector of Lviv State University. I used to hold monthly meetings with students - not with just a handful but up to 700 in the assembly hall. Anybody could come; everybody knew about these meetings. The students could ask whatever they wanted and talk about anything and with whomever they wanted. At first, the meetings were somewhat awkward, but then they livened up. The main thing is that we would solve all problems on the spot: for example, if students said that a certain professor had done his job badly or some other problem had cropped up, we would settle it then and there. Naturally, students were not always right, either. This is a case of direct democracy, isn’t it?
“Second, a special center conducted teacher-assessment monitoring every semester (this is still being done). About 700 teachers and between 9,000 and 10,000 students took part in it. At first, we were afraid that students would be writing only bad things about their lecturers, but then we saw that they were very tactful and unbiased people. The average grade was 4.3-4.5 points, i.e., the assessment was quite positive. I was convinced that this is a very effective method of direct democracy. Another method was a hotline: if a student phoned in about a specific question, the problem was settled within half an hour. If there were specific complaints, they were looked into at a meeting of a students’ group or community presided over by a dean, a pro-rector, or me. I would recommend this procedure to many rectors because if you talk frankly with young people, mutual trust is developed.”
