The new academic year in Ukraine begins with the next cuts in the sphere of education. According to MP from the Opposition bloc Serhiy Lovochkin, the current policy of power destroys the country’s perspective, depriving the economy of literate specialists.

“A new wave of closing schools and reducing scholarships to students in the beginning of the academic year is not some miscalculations of officials. This is a direct result of the socio-economic course of power. Even the poorest countries are trying to improve the quality of education, so that their citizens are in demand in the modern world – and the Ukrainian government reduces the costs of this article. The country is consciously deprived of qualified personnel, and Ukrainians – of the future,” Serhiy Lovochkin said.

“The chaotic reforms of recent years only confirm the lack of power in the strategy for the development of the labor market and society as a whole. When children from poor families cannot get higher education only for financial reasons, it conserves poverty. It is necessary to restore social equality in education – both for the sake of the future of our citizens, and for the sake of the future of Ukraine,” the politician considers.

According to the Opposition bloc analytical center, over the past three years, financing of education in real terms (taking into account inflation) has halved, and its share in GDP has fallen from 7% to 5.7%. In the budget resolution for 2018, the cost of education for the general fund of the state budget is also reduced by 1.6%.

According to the Ministry of Education, since 2014 the number of schools in Ukraine has decreased from 17.6 thousand to 16.9 thousand, and in the new school year there will be 16,566. The number of teachers for the same period has decreased from 454 thousand to 438 thousand, while the number of students increased from 3.75 million to 3.84 million.

As a result of the reform of the scholarship system since the beginning of 2017, only 40% of students had the right to an academic scholarship “by default” (up to 70% before the reform). The Ministry of Finance plans to reduce by 2020 the number of academic scholarships to 15% of the total number of budget students.