The New Ukrainian School

The education reform launched under the name of the New Ukrainian School is one of the more ambitious things the country has attempted, precisely because it is not administrative: it changes what happens inside a classroom.

What it changes

The cycle extends from eleven years to twelve, which aligns Ukraine with European practice and, more importantly, gives a year back to a curriculum that had been compressed.

The teaching model shifts from transmission to competence: the objective is a child who can apply something rather than reproduce it. That sounds like educational jargon and it has a concrete consequence — a lesson looks different, a test looks different, and a teacher's role changes from delivering material to organising learning.

And primary education is restructured around integrated subjects and group work rather than a rigid subject grid.

Why it is hard

Because it requires several hundred thousand teachers to teach differently from how they were taught and from how they have taught for decades. Retraining at that scale is the whole project, and printing new textbooks is the easy part.

Physical conditions matter too: group work needs movable furniture and space, which many schools do not have.

What the war did to it

Interrupted the rollout at the point it was reaching secondary school, and simultaneously demonstrated why the reform was right — a curriculum built around applying knowledge survives disrupted schooling better than one built around covering material in order.

What determines whether it lands

Teacher salaries and teacher supply, discussed elsewhere in this record. A reform that depends on the quality of what a teacher does cannot succeed while the profession cannot recruit.

The result of an education reform will be visible in fifteen years — and until then everyone will assess it against their own expectation. The only thing I can say from the employer's side is this: the quality I look for is not memorisation but being able to define a problem that has not been defined. If that is what the reform aims at, it is aimed in the right place.