Kyiv has no shortage of international schools that originally appeared to cater to families of diplomats and expats working in Ukraine. These days, the schools are no less popular with wealthy Ukrainians who are unhappy with the declining education system, or look for Western-type schooling and are prepared to spend big bucks on educating their offspring.
There are English, German, French and Dutch international schools, as well as a partially Turkish one. The ones that have the greatest name recognition are Kyiv Pechersk School, Kyiv International School, British International School and Meridian International. All of them cater to children from kindergarten through high school. Curriculums vary greatly in all of them, and so does their size, accreditation and values.
Some of them offer the International Baccalaureate, a globally recognized certificate that allows students to enroll in 2,000 universities worldwide.
Pechersk School International offers an International Baccalaureate education for primary, middle and senior years. Consequently, the school is especially popular among expat families. Around 70 percent of the children attending the school are foreigners, mostly American, British, Polish and French nationals. The remaining 30 percent of the school’s pupils are Ukrainians.
“Of that 70 percent we have a very high number of families from the U.S. Embassy and other embassies. I think we have children from 21 diplomatic missions,” says Pechersk school director Steven Calland-Scoble.
Calland-Scoble says his students score high in the standardized International Baccalaureate tests. The school average is 90 percent, which is 10 percent over the global average.
Olyana Gordiyenko is a mother of two who is a lawyer at the Kyiv offices of Baker & McKenzie. Her four-year-old daughter Oleksandra will enroll in kindergarten this year at Pechersk School International after attending British International. Little Oleksandra, along with children from eight other families, were on the waiting list at Pechersk School for a year.
“I had five interviews myself to be accepted to the school this year,” Gordiyenko said. “As a parent, I had to pass ‘exams’ on what I consider right when raising my child, how I would act in this and that situation.”
Priority in admission is given to foreigners over Ukrainians and siblings of those who already study there. The school can accept 460 students at a time. Current upgrades will allow for 80 additional places within the next two years.
Calland-Scoble hopes that the school campus space will grow by another 40 percent next year. Driving demand has been a steady increase in spending power by wealthier citizens and foreigners in Kyiv who seek to get an education for their children that is better than what Ukraine’s notoriously below-par state schools have to offer.
Kyiv International School, on the other hand, has the facilities to handle a larger number of students. Currently it has 740 youngsters enrolled. The school offers senior year International Baccalaureate-standard programs only, which lasts through the final two years of school. Until then, an American-style curriculum is taught.
Kirsten Maher came to Ukraine with her German husband on his company posting. “We are kind of a very stereotypical expat family,” she says. Having to move to a new country every four years, she has seen many international schools with her five kids aged from 6 to 13.
In Ukraine, Kyiv International School managed to live up to Maher’s standards, especially with their international community of children.
“Of two best friends of my oldest daughter, one is Japanese and another Israeli. My son’s best friend is from Turkey. One of my other daughter’s best friend is half-Ukrainian, half-Brazilian. The diversity is quite incredible,” Maher said.
To manage that kind of international flow of children, the school takes a flexible approach of having age groups instead of grades. That way in case the child is behind in some class, he or she can attend those classes with children a year younger. Children who are more advanced in a certain subject move up to an older group.
While the Pechersk and Kyiv International Schools prepare their students to enter Western universities, British International School offers a dual British and Ukrainian curriculum, allowing their students to consider entering Ukrainian universities as well. The British International School is also in the process of being accredited with the International Baccalaureate program. The school has two campuses with 450 students.
“We have two options that we offer. One is the national curriculum for England and Wales, which is a very British approach. [And] there is also a Ukrainian curriculum,” says Keith Jackson, deputy principal.
Yet these schools are a real luxury. On average, yearly tuition starts at around $15,000 for the kindergarten and goes up to $20,000 for the school. School buses, lunches and extra curriculum activities cost extra.
“In terms of social reputation, those schools are considered to be elite,” said Pavlo Pylianskyi, former deputy education minister and director of the Educational Monitoring Center. “Sometimes they are called schools for rich brats, because their cost is absolutely [unaffordable] for an average Ukrainian family.”
Gordiyenko, whose daughter attended British International last year, says her daughter kept asking why she, unlike some other children at the school, did not have an iPhone. “Kids that go there are from pretty wealthy families. In our country it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are well raised,” Gordiyenko added.
Kirsten Maher, whose husband’s company is paying for their children’s studies under the terms of his contract, said such issues come up at all international schools. Ukraine is not that bad on the international scale.
“If you can afford to pay that [tuition], plus the bus, the canteen and all the excursions, of course then it’s not going to be unusual to have a 7-year-old with an iPad. But we’ve seen much worse,” Maher said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Maryna Irkliyenko can be reached at [email protected].
