War worsens the performance and socialization of Ukrainian schoolchildren - Media.

Russian aggression harms education in Ukraine

Due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the country's future has been undermined in many areas, particularly in education for millions of Ukrainian schoolchildren, reports the New York Times.

Children are forced to attend classes underground or online. Due to constant alarms, learning becomes impossible. Children are falling behind in their studies and losing social skills such as communication and conflict resolution due to limited contact with classmates.

Many students study online and attend school in person only one or a few days a week. In more dangerous regions, close to the front line, students conduct classes in underground bomb shelters. According to the Ministry of Education, Ukraine has built 137 underground schools, mainly in the east and south of the country.

Fourteen percent of students studying the Ukrainian curriculum are fully online, including about 300,000 children from abroad.

Many Ukrainians also remain online voluntarily. For example, displaced persons prefer to keep their children in their old schools online instead of transferring to new schools near their new homes.

This greatly hinders children from feeling connected, said Emmanuel Abriu, head of the education department at UNICEF in Ukraine.

For those hiding under Russian occupation, switching to Ukrainian online schools is a significant risk. The occupying authorities force children to attend local schools and study according to the Russian curriculum.

Sharing her experiences, Anna, who previously lived in occupied Melitopol, forced her 6-year-old son to study in a Ukrainian school remotely, avoiding Russian soldiers and neighbors.

Svetlana Stepurenko, who moved to Norway with her children, explained that her children attend local schools and then take Ukrainian language lessons online in the afternoons. She worries that her children are falling behind in their studies and wishes to return to Ukrainian schools as soon as possible.

The continuation of the war leads to demographic losses for Ukraine. According to the director of the Ptukha Institute of Demography and Social Studies, Ella Libanova, more and more Ukrainians who have become refugees are getting used to life abroad and do not wish to return to Ukraine.

Vasil Voskoboynik, president of the All-Ukrainian Association of Companies for International Employment, believes that the only way to resolve the demographic crisis in Ukraine is to attract migrants from other countries. He argues that an increase in birth rates will no longer help increase the country's population.