“This year’s Day of Knowledge will bring to Avdiivka’s comprehensive schools some hundred and sixty first-formers -- and it is up to all of us to ensure them proper study facilities,” stated Iryna Herashchenko in the course of her working tour to Avdiivka.
Shortly before the start of this school year the Presidential envoy for peaceful settlement of the Donetsk-Luhansk clash Iryna Herashchenko visited Avdiivka to get to know if local education establishments are ready to have schoolchildren at the K-day. She was accompanied by her colleagues from the Committee on European Integration and the Committee on Construction, Urban Development, Housing and Communal Services.
During the visit they inspected two schools – No.1 and No.3 in Avdiivka – which are presently under reconstruction. They also met with directors/headmasters of local secondary schools and pre-school establishments to talk over the state of affairs in education sphere, together with Pavlo Malykhin, the head of local executive authority. The directors reported at the meeting that the schools are wholly ready to accept the children on September 1. Provisional last-year data gives us 1,381 children who studied in comprehensive schools of the town and four hundred, forty-five ones who brought up in the pre-school establishments.
In Avdiivka, two schools and three pre-school institutions were partly stopped through the Russian aggression in the east of Ukraine. The local authorities are now taking all-round measures to bridge the gaps in providing due education. The local budget, for instance, is used to cover complete overhauls and in-line repairs of the schools and the pre-school institutions. There has been UAH 3,5 million allotted for this year to this end.
1,386 pupils have there been reported for this year to obtain secondary education within the 2017-2018 timespan in Avdiivka, whereas the pre-school bodies would educate four hundred, sixty-two children.
Furthermore, a sizeable international aid from Ukraine’s foreign partners was announced by the educators at the meeting. As much as twenty five thousand euros had the Polish government appropriated to one of the schools for recovery.
Also, the headmasters shared information that forty front-line children, under support of the Donetsk oblast authority, would travel this fall to get educated to Munich, FRG. Additionally, the educators made special remarks on the acute scarcity of interactive whiteboards and school buses at the local education establishments. The First Vice-Speaker voiced then her hopes that the issues raised be settled by the beginning of this school year. “We do appreciate your kind and profound labour, and thus we’ll do our best to deliver cleared conditions for education of our youth,” underscored I. Herashchenko. The First Vice-Speaker informed that provision of comprehensive schools with interactive whiteboards might fall on this early autumn.
Other topics and issues were, too, discussed at the meeting, viz. – Avdiivka’s communal-general service.
Within the “A Little Library for Donbas” Charity Movement, launched in 2014 by Ukrainian editors under the patronage of the State Committee for Television and Radio-Broadcasting of Ukraine, the members of parliament handed over some fiction, manual and text books in favour of servicemen and comprehensive school libraries No. 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7 in Avdiivka.
At the closing of the visit, the MPs dropped in at a recreation centre of the Avdiivka Coke and Chemical Plant to enjoy a charity show delivered by the folk and rock band “Mandry” in aid of the 26th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence.
The parliament’s members paid also a short visit to positions of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade to convey the needful humanitarian aid there.