Achievement of Millennium Development Goals in the Field of Education in Ukraine

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Achievement of Millennium Development Goals in the Field of Education in Ukraine

Journal Title: Демографія та соціальна економіка - Year 2013, Vol 20, Issue

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the situation with the «Providing Quality Education Throughout Life» Goal in the context of Ukraine’s implementation of the Millennium Development Goals by the end of 2012. This article describes the achievements of Ukraine in the field of education in recent years, analyzes the main measures of education policy, which had a positive systemic impact on education, highlights the existing problems in the implementation of the declared intentions for 2015, taking into account regional and residential differences. The recommendations on ways to implement the targeted indicators and update of the matrix of tasks after 2015 are also proposed in the article. The most significant progress has been achieved in the sphere of preschool education, particularly through the adoption of the legislative decision on compulsory preschool education for children of senior preschool age. Significant steps to improve the quality and to modernize the content of preschool educa- tion have been made as well. However, despite the improvement in coverage rates, the existing network of preschool institutions cannot meet the growing needs of urban and rural population in these services. The workload of kindergartens has been steadily increasing each year (and this is a sign of deterioration of the quality of preschool education) due to the increase of the total number of preschool children in Ukraine. That is why the most effective measures of educational policy are the expansion of various forms of obtaining preschool education along with the development of the network of educational institutions. The progress in secondary education coverage is provided through the state guarantee of its obligatoriness and free-of-charge basis. Besides, the sources of obtaining it are diversified in Ukraine at different types of educational institutions, including vocational and higher. Nowadays the tendency of youth simultaneously obtaining complete secondary education and professional education/qualification is increasing in Ukraine. However, the analysis of the situation showed that the characteristics of regional and residential educational infrastructure are influencing further education objectives of schoolchildren. The existing network of rural schools is physically unable to provide the proper coverage of adolescents with complete secondary education, so some village children are forced to change their place of learning after finishing basic school education. Herewith the main task of educational policy is to prevent the decline of interest in obtaining a higher education level, especially among the pupils from low-income and disadvantaged families. This article also analyzes the cause of the underfulfilment of the target indicator on coverage of youth with higher education. It is shown that the structural changes in the number of pupil and student contingents of the appropriate age took place due to the transition to the 11-year duration of school education. Nevertheless, the dynamics of enrollment of young people in higher education suggest the preservation of its accessibility, including through the expansion of state funding, social support and removal of institutional barriers of obtaining it. The continuity of the transition between middle and high schools is provided for too: currently the majority of pupils become university students immediately after finishing school. The article emphasizes that the central problem of education is the quality of educational training. This problem must be solved by the expansion of educational policy and mechanisms for its implementation. The basic ways of solving these problems are defined in the article.

Authors and Affiliations

О. М. Khmelevska

Keywords

system of education enrollment rate in education access to education quality of education educational policy Millennium Development Goals

EP ID EP287218
DOI 10.15407/dse2013.02.009
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