Education and War in Ukraine (February 24 — April 1, 2022)
The Cedos Think Tank works to monitor the impact of the war on education in Ukraine. With this work, Cedos wants to record the most important decisions and events in the field and outline the key challenges.
The next day after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (MES) recommended pausing the education process in educational institutions at all levels and starting a two-week vacation for all students and education workers. Since then, part of the Ukrainian territory has become temporarily occupied, a number of cities, towns, and villages (Mariupol, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and others) have been turned into active battlegrounds. More than 10 million people have been forced to leave their homes: 6.5 million moved within the country, and 3.9 million went abroad. Most of these people are women and children. UNICEF reports that more than half of Ukrainian children — 4.3 out of 7.5 million — have been forced by war to leave their homes. As of March 28, 144 children had died and over 220 had been wounded due to the war. 659 education institutions had been damaged by bombing or shelling, 74 had been destroyed completely.