“Today there was a bang and the children left”: how schools survive in new regions

Flowers, gifts, bows and festive concerts. Teacher’s Day in new regions is no different from the favorite all-Russian holiday in other parts of the country. True, it did not take place in all schools, but only in those that managed to open under a comprehensive school restoration program. And this, according to local teachers, is already 80% of the planned volume. The rest of the children are studying remotely for now, and in places where there is no Internet or electricity, part-time.

In the Kherson region, the best teachers were awarded for Teacher’s Day. 17 teachers received a worthy cash prize – 200 thousand rubles. But still, the best gift is the opportunity to work.

“In the Kherson region, 99 schools were restored,” says Oksana Kostyuchenko, head of the public relations department of the Ministry of Education of the Kherson region. – In 93 schools the educational process has been fully established. Classes follow the Russian educational program. Six schools are just getting ready to open: final preparations are being completed, communications are being checked, contracts are being concluded with security companies and companies that provide children with food.

The Ministry of Education expects that six schools will open on November 1. Distance learning is ongoing in two more schools in the Kherson region. These are educational institutions that are located near the combat area – 15 kilometers further from the front line. One is located in Novokakhovka, the other in Velikaya Lepetikha. There are children left here, they study, but only when there are no interruptions in the Internet and no missile alert has been declared. In this way, approximately 600 schoolchildren receive knowledge.

The region complains of an acute shortage of teachers. The supply of teachers is 50–70%. Teachers are needed in almost all disciplines.

As for textbooks, there are quite enough of them. New batches are delivered almost every day. A lot of help comes from the patronage regions of Russia: Kaliningrad, Krasnodar Territory.

All children in the region are provided with hot meals. Primary school students receive free breakfasts and hot lunches, and other schoolchildren receive hot tea and a bun. Students of cadet classes also receive breakfast and lunch free of charge. According to a ministry representative, there are currently four of them.

– On average, we now have 20 thousand people undergoing training under the Russian program. True, these are not all school-age children. Some parents do not send their children to Russian schools,” says Oksana Kostyuchenko.

As for the Lugansk People’s Republic, there are even more educational institutions here than before the start of the SVO.

“Together with the new territories, the number of schools and boarding schools has almost doubled,” says Elena Bakhmut, head of the general education department of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic. – Currently 560 schools are registered. 28 of them could not open – they did not recruit children. These are educational institutions in destroyed areas. There is no light, no water, no communications. These are Kremensky, Svatovsky districts, the cities of Lisichansk, Rubezhnoye, Severodonetsk. Children from these settlements are educated part-time and part-time. They come to school, receive counseling and homework. Face-to-face consultations last no more than 20 minutes.

Every week, the directors of Lugansk schools send a report to the Ministry, the so-called “traffic light”. It shows how many children are being trained. According to the latest data, 109,068 children study in the LPR, 8 thousand of them remotely.

“This figure is constantly changing. Somewhere there was a bang, and the children left,” Elena Bakhmut explains the situation.

The situation with teachers in the LPR is better than in the Kherson region. About 10% of the teaching staff is missing here. Teachers come from all over Russia, and not only. According to Bakhmut, mathematics in one of the schools is taught by a teacher from Serbia. I took on a heavy load – 25 hours. They also get out at the expense of the “old guard” – they do not let retired teachers go on a well-deserved rest. They beg you to work. Previously, there was a problem with Russian teachers, but that was also resolved.

– Ukrainian language teachers have completed retraining courses to become Russian language teachers. Received diplomas. Now this issue has been removed,” says Elena. “The only thing we ask for is peace.” We’ll do the rest.

And in Mariupol (DPR), which practically had to be completely rebuilt, a separate 3-year plan was formed. As part of the first stage, a modern school with 1,100 places was opened in the city. It is called a fairy tale school – one of the most modern in Russia. Each class is truly equipped with the latest technology. For example, the biology classroom is divided into two parts: in the first, schoolchildren will study theory, and in the second, they will train on electronic mannequins that literally replicate the human body.

In total, by the end of this year, they plan to open another 100 educational institutions in new regions under a comprehensive school restoration program.