Eight percent less first graders this year

Last Saturday millions of children went to school for the first time in their life. “Repairs have been completed in practically all grade schools,” says Education and Science Minister Stanislav Nikolaienko, “although there are some problems in Luhansk and Zaporizhia oblasts; we’ll try to solve them in the nearest future.” It is also a fact that central heating systems are still be repaired in 25% of Ukrainian schools. “We hope that these repairs will be done by Oct. 25,” assures Nikolaienko, adding that the total number of schoolchildren is down by almost 152,000 this year, compared to 2006 (-3%). Four million seven hundred thousand children went to school on Sept. 1 (there are over 20,000 grade schools, including 34 new state-run ones), among them more than 360,000 first graders (8% less than in 2006). Nikolaienko says that “the government’s policy in the sphere of education is aimed at filling in 450 schoolteacher vacancies all over Ukraine by increasing their pay and paying back wages. Meanwhile, schoolchildren are provided with classrooms complete with modern computers. Under the governmental educational computerization program, 3,130 such projects have been implemented out of 3,194 planned ones, which stands for 98 percent. Also, different computer systems will be installed in the next couple of days. Nikolaienko promised that Ukrainian schoolchildren would be supplied with new textbooks.