In May, heads of education departments and their deputies from communities in Kyiv region completed a special advanced training programme “Decentralised education management in communities under martial law”.

The professional development programme was approved by the National Agency of Ukraine on Civil Service and is worth 2 ECTS credits (60 hours). The training lasted from 11 to 27 May and was conducted remotely, whilst an in-person workshop was held in Kyiv on 28–29 May, which served as a platform for discussing the opportunities and challenges of implementing the reform of specialised senior secondary schools in the region.

Sixty-nine heads of the education department in the region participated in the final in-person workshop.

Speakers at the workshop included:

• Nadiia Kuzmychova, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine;
• Valentyna Poltorak, DECIDE Project Manager;
• Yaroslava Trostianska, Director of the Department of Education and Science at the Kyiv Regional Military Administration;
• DECIDE National Experts: Serhii Yatskovskyi, Mariia Drobot (Mishchenkova), Pavlo Ostapenko, Nadiia Balabust, Kateryna Nemyrovska, Andrii Matsokin, Kseniia Plievako;
• Anna Morenko, Coordinator of the Educational Environment Division of the NUS Implementation Office.

The participants focused on key issues of education management in communities, in particular:

• regulatory support for the activities of educational institutions;
• the development of a capable network of academic lyceums based on available data;
• the integration of the reform into the strategic planning of communities;
• funding for the development of lyceums;
• the creation of a career guidance system for children and teenagers;
• the implementation of national and regional policies in specialised secondary education.

During the in-person meeting, the heads of educational departments in communities of Kyiv region also raised questions that are of greatest concern to communities today:

• the transformation of the network of general secondary education institutions and the powers of local governments in this process;
• ensuring access to lyceums, taking into account the condition of roads and the technical condition of school buses;
• organising the teaching of children with special educational needs in specialised senior secondary schools;
• ensuring the right to complete general secondary education for students currently in Grades 9 and 10;
• ensuring the synchronisation of data in AIKOM-2 at the level of educational institutions.

Valentyna Poltorak, DECIDE Project Manager, presented to communities the opportunities for further cooperation within the framework of the second phase of the Project and outlined the key areas of support for the region.

Special attention was paid to the career guidance system. DECIDE Project experts presented approaches to establishing career guidance hubs, cooperation between schools and the business sector, and the role of communities in helping students make conscious choices about their educational and professional paths.

The programme included study visits to educational institutions in Kyiv region, where the participants learned about practical examples of the transformation of the educational environment:

• Lyceum No. 1 in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka;
• Vasylkiv Vocational College.

The intensive training programme provided an opportunity to cover a wide range of questions related to education management in the context of the implementation of the third stage of the NUS reform! We are grateful to all the participants and would like to share some inspiring photos!