Halyna Radchuk, a 12th grade student at Kyiv International School, is impatient to graduate, but knows the risk of going back to school.
“I don’t see how it is even possible to social distance at school,” she told the Kyiv Post.
“Yes, we perhaps are going to be sitting further away from each other in class and we are going to wear masks, but at the end of the day, there are bathrooms, hallways, and, in general, life doesn’t always allow us to be distanced.”
Many students, parents and teachers share her anxiety. Schools across Ukraine are preparing to reopen on Sept. 1 as the growing pandemic hangs overhead. Epidemiologists expect infections to surge in the fall, especially among younger people.
While most schools are planning to open, they will operate under a series of constraints introduced this week by the Ministry of Health. These may lead to smaller classes and longer school days that will complicate the lives of teachers and parents.
Distance learning will be a major part of education, and not only in “red” zones — areas of Ukraine with the worst epidemiological situation — where schools will stay closed. This presents its own set of challenges.
Parents and students had mixed reviews of distance learning. Some said it gave them more time to get their work done. But mother Natalia Narula said “watching my child spend twice as much time on studies was quite painful.”
And there are unanswered questions about implementation. Some parents are still waiting for information from their schools. Teachers’ unions are worried that the rules are being left up to local administrations, instead of being codified. And many are aware that their workload will go up, unlike their safety.
Looming threat
Private laboratory company Synevo thinks Ukraine is still dealing with the first wave of the epidemic. The rise in daily cases mainly comes from better testing, according to the lab.
That said, fall may bring more seasonal infections, which will accelerate COVID’s spread. Research in recent months showed that the virus is increasingly affecting young people, including children, according to Synevo commercial director Nikolay Skavronsky.
“With the start of the school year, the risks of spreading the virus among children are enormous. Unlike adults, it will be more difficult for children to adhere to the rules of hygiene, maintain physical distance and follow other recommendations,” Skavronsky wrote in an email. “Therefore, it is extremely important to conduct an active information campaign aimed specifically at children.”
Pavlo Kovtoniuk, former deputy health minister, said that children are likely to be asymptomatic carriers. This means it will be easier for them to spread the disease undetected.
The new normal
Upon entering the school premises for the first time since March, students may be surprised by their surroundings. The once-bland hallway walls will now be covered in educational banners and posters aimed at raising hygiene awareness.
Masks will be mandatory to enter the school or move around its hallways, although they can be taken off in class. Grades 1–4 will be exempt from this requirement, with Health Minister Maksym Stepanov putting those students in a lower risk group.
However, experts and parents cautioned that young kids can unwittingly spread infection. “The kids are going to want to hug each other… I think there are going to be a lot of false starts,” said David Conover, an American whose three children attend the Kyiv International School. However, he believes that kids can adapt.
“In March, when this was happening, we had to have our kids have masks on (and tell them) ‘don’t touch the elevator buttons, stop licking the doorknob’ — it was hard. And now they put on their masks and don’t touch anything.”
In schools, “how are you feeling today?” will no longer be a rhetorical question — a negative response may potentially lead to an isolated room, according to the new protocol which requires mandatory quarantine in case of COVID-like symptoms. If a student does test positive, the new regulations require mandatory self-isolation for the rest of the class as well.
The students will be greeted by a hand sanitizer checkpoint, where they will also be able to dispose of used masks in a special bin. Student flow has to be organized, with different age groups following separately labelled routes.
One of the biggest changes is the minimization of student movement, possibly leading to classes spending the whole day in a single room.
Fabian von Reinsperg, who teaches English and French at the German School in Kyiv, said that his school turned the classrooms into “isolation rooms” for a single class at a time, with teachers switching in and out. This will require teachers to move equipment between rooms, such as geographic maps for geography classes.
“We are going to have to do some improvising,” he said.
Staff will have to get temperature scans before entering the building — people above 37.2 degrees will be screened out.
Concerns and challenges
To meet distancing requirements, students will need to sit farther apart, often with empty seats between them. This will require classrooms to be divided into subgroups. That will make more work for teachers, lengthen the workday and require more funding, according to the Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine.
The union sent a letter to the Cabinet of Ministers, saying that, to avoid ambiguity, clear rules need to be established about these divisions. For now, local administrations have leeway in how they organize their schools.
“The organization of the educational process in quarantine should be regulated by state laws, rather than local decisions by educational institutions, especially without adequate financial support,” the union wrote.
The teachers also complained that they have to bear the organizational workload of distance learning and increased communication with students and parents, “leading to an increase of the complexity and intensity of work.”
Meanwhile, constant long-term contact with students and parents increases the risk of infection.
To compensate, the union called for a 50% pay increase, an increase in funding and the creation of a government insurance program.
Many are still in the dark about how their schools will be organized, including Radchuk. Several parents also said they had little information, other than rumors that their schools may have separate morning and evening sessions.
The logistics between home and school will also be more complicated. Reinsperg said that parents had previously complained that they had to provide a lot of teaching support and sometimes step in as substitute teachers, which they were not trained to do.
Furthermore, with after-school programs no longer available, some parents will have to pick their kids up earlier, which can upset their schedules.
According to a poll conducted by sociologists at the Razumkov Center, most Ukrainians support the idea that the responsibility of administering schools during a pandemic falls upon the Ministry of Education and Science.
Distance learning
Any regions or cities classified as being in the red zone by Ukraine’s Minister of Health will be required to transition to distance learning.
When the Ukrainian government decided to temporarily close schools due to the pandemic in March, about half of Ukrainian students were not satisfied with the implementation of distance learning, says the Razumkov Center.
The survey conducted by the Ukraine-based think tank further showed that the main reasons behind the discontent with distance learning was the plummeting success rate of students, technical issues such as poor internet connection and the absence of needed technology.
“I was definitely less productive coping with self-teaching and adjusting to this new life,” Mariya Neroshchyna, a senior at the Kyiv International School, told the Kyiv Post. “I feel like the shorter online classes were not enough to grasp the material.”
One initiative the Ukrainian government might consider continuing is the nationwide all-Ukrainian online school project, an educational program that was broadcasted on TV and the internet for 5th to 11th graders stuck at home during the lockdown amid the pandemic. However, this still doesn’t solve the logistical problem for students without proper access to technology.
On a university level, a study by the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance concluded that 86% of Ukrainian lecturers had no substantial experience of online education before COVID-19.
The lack of communication between the teacher and the student is a big reason why students struggle, says Narula, a mother whose two children studied in Kyiv during the pandemic.
“Educational institutions in Ukraine require a different format for online learning,” Narula told the Kyiv Post. “The abrupt switch to online learning in March was mostly rushed, without proper consideration for the format and platform needed to keep the students engaged.”
