Poltava region prepares to implement specialised secondary education reform

The final workshop ‘Reform of Specialised Senior Secondary Schools: Opportunities and Challenges for the Community’ was held on 11 March in Poltava.

The event was organised by DECIDE in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the Poltava Regional State Administration and the Poltava Regional Council.

The workshop marked the completion of a training course that ran from 18 February and brought together 28 communities in Poltava region, along with their heads and relevant deputies.

Discussions on the implementation of the reform were held with:

• Nadiia Kuzmychova, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine;

• Valentyna Poltorak, DECIDE Project Manager;

• leadership of the Poltava Region State Administration and the Poltava Regional Council;

• DECIDE Project expert team working with communities on the implementation of the reform.

The meeting was held in the format of an open dialogue. The participants discussed national and regional policy in specialised secondary education, as well as the role of communities in the implementation of this reform.

The discussion focused largely on establishing a viable network of lyceums. DECIDE Project experts presented approaches to data-driven management decision-making, educational network planning, and ensuring pupils’ access to high-quality senior secondary education.

Community leaders’ most pressing concerns centred on:

• making lyceums accessible, given the poor condition of roads and the unsatisfactory quality of school buses;

• requirements for the minimum number of students in senior grades;

• state budget funding for gymnasiums with fewer than 200 pupils;

• ways to establish lyceums, not only as legal entities but also through physical separation where possible, given the existing infrastructure;

• the transformation of the Inter-school Training and Production Centre in such a way that access to certain critically important blue-collar professions remains within the community, taking into account the impossibility of including them in the curriculum of academic-oriented secondary education and, at the same time, the impossibility of establishing a vocational education institution;

• the completion of general secondary education by ninth-grade students.

The participants paid special attention to approaches to modelling the network of educational institutions, using the example of Poltava region, as well as practical tools that help communities prepare for the implementation of the reform.

Moreover, Valentyna Poltorak, DECIDE Project Manager, outlined opportunities for further cooperation with communities in Poltava region within the framework of DECIDE Project Phase II, specifically support in strategic planning, expert guidance during the implementation of reforms, and the development of management capacity in communities within the education sector.

During the workshop, the participants also visited Lyceum No. 17 ‘Intellect’ in Poltava and the career guidance hub at the I. H. Borovenskyi Reshetylivka Professional Agricultural Lyceum, where they saw practical examples of the development of the educational environment and career guidance work.

Such meetings help communities gain a better understanding of the rationale behind educational reforms, whilst also bringing communities, educators, and experts together around a common goal – the creation of a modern and accessible specialised senior school that will open up more opportunities for Ukrainian students.

The DECIDE project is implemented by NGO DOCCU and PHZH International Projects in Education with the support of the Embassy of Switzerland in Ukraine.

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