Today, pre-school education is fully financed from the local budget and is thus a hostage to the revenues of hromadas – to remedy this, a subvention from the state budget is needed. This was the statement made by Pavlo Khobzey, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, at the Carpathian Forum for Regional Development in Yaremche today, on May 31, 2018.

“We live in the world where the leading nations are focused on the early development of children. This development does not start at three years, which is the starting point for our official pre-school education, – it actually starts before a child is even born. Pre-school education requirements in Ukraine are not regulated in the Constitution as thoroughly as this is the case with school education. This enables the Ministry of Finance to claim that pre-school education is up to the local self-government bodies and has been financed from local budgets for years already. This point is indeed valid to some extent – the state budget lost significant resources after the decentralisation reform. But we have to find solutions, otherwise our country will lose its positions in human resource development. Pre-school education can’t be a hostage to the revenues of hromadas, a state subvention is needed to provide equal possibilities to children in the entire country. For this, we need support from the members of Parliament, since we are not in position to tackle this issue by ourselves,” Khobzey said.

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