Children in frontline areas of Ukraine have lost 25% more days of learning due to the war than the world’s longest COVID-19 school closures, as a lack of bomb shelters means it is still too dangerous to for children to attend class, Save the Children said today.
The new analysis comes as one in three school-aged children in Ukraine1– about 1.2 million – begin their fourth consecutive academic year of disrupted learning.
Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, 400,000 children have spent about 580 days without entering the classroom at all 2 – 25% longer than the 440 classroom days lost to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines, which was the last country to re-open schools since March 20203.
A further 780,000 children in Ukraine alternate, in cohorts, between a week of remote learning and a week of in-person classes.
While the number of children learning in person has gradually increased since 2022, persistent danger of air strikes and shelling puts any school building without adequate bomb shelters off-limits.
School closures have an enduring impact on children’s education, with research showing that children in countries that closed schools the longest during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered the largest learning losses.4
With the escalation of conflict in Ukraine coming just a year after schools re-opened following the pandemic, the toll of lost learning has been immense. Schools in Ukraine were fully closed for 125 learning days during the pandemic and partially closed for a further 95.5
Earlier this year, Save the Children research highlighted the challenges children in Ukraine face when not able to attend school in person, including having to study online using smartphones with broken screens, poor internet connection, lack of electronic devices for learning and electricity shortages.6
Maryna*, 36, lives with her seven children in the Kharkiv region, where schools are closed due to a lack of bomb shelters and proximity to the frontline of fighting. Her family only had access to one device to connect to lessons7, and the older children, who had exams coming up, took priority, leaving the younger ones to fall behind.
Maryna said: “The difficulties are enormous: I can see from the children that they have lost the school skills they had before COVID. They no longer read as well as they used to, nor do they write as well. They also have more trouble remembering information. The difficulties caused by the war have had a very strong impact on the quality of education.
“Online learning has had a negative impact on their development. They refuse to read; they are not interested in it now. Although before, when they went to school, they were interested in everything, their knowledge is now at a low level."
Three and a half years of full-scale war in Ukraine have forced over a quarter of the country’s 38 million population from their homes and decimated the country’s education sector. Nearly 1,800 schools have been damaged, 226 of them destroyed completely8 while frequent air raid sirens forced children in Ukraine to miss an average of one in every five school lessons during the past academic year.9
Sonia Khush, Country Director for Save the Children in Ukraine, said:
“In more than three years of war, hundreds of thousands of children in Ukraine have not stepped foot inside a classroom at all, while a third of the entire child population start this new academic year with their learning disrupted in some way.
“Going to school is not just about learning and exam results - children’s social development and mental wellbeing are also at stake. We will see the impact of this for generations to come.
"Parties to the conflict in Ukraine must end the appalling attacks on schools and other civilian infrastructure, and grave violations against children must end immediately. At the same time, continued financial support from governments, donors, and the international community is critical to mitigate the impact of this war on children’s education, development, wellbeing and futures”
Save the Children has been working in Ukraine since 2014 and has scaled up operations since the war escalated in February 2022. To help children across Ukraine access education, Save the Children and its partners have established about 90 Digital Learning Centres – hubs with all the necessary digital learning tools and devices and facilitators trained to provide learning and wellbeing support.
We have also funded rehabilitation works, including shelter refurbishment, about 70 schools and kindergartens across the country, and supplied laptops and tablets to regions where schools remain closed, so girls and boys without essential devices to continue their learning remotely.
ENDS
Sonia Khush, Country Director for Save the Children in Ukraine, is available for interviews.
MEDIA CONTACT: Mala Darmadi on 0425562113 or media.team@savethechildren.org.au
*Name has been changed to protect anonymity