New Ukrainian School (NUS) is a comprehensive reform of school education in Ukraine, which began in 2016 and will last until 2029. Its main goal is to create a school that will be pleasant to study at and that will give students not only knowledge, as is the case today, but also the ability to apply it in everyday life.
The NUS reform is a long-term reform, because it is impossible to quickly change the educational tradition that has existed for decades. Therefore, today, after the first educational processes launched under NUS standards in 2018, in fact, two education systems coexist in Ukraine.
At the same time, there are more than 100 classes in Ukraine that has been piloting the NUS reform in every subsequent grade every year. That is, when in 2022 all 5th graders will study under NUS, these pilot schools will test the principles of NUS in 6th grade – and when all 6th graders become part of NUS, they will pilot 7th grade. And the same thing will happen every year: the “pilot’’ will be a year ahead of the all-Ukrainian wave of transition to NUS standards. In 2028/2029 school year, these pilot classes will be the first 12th graders in Ukraine.
The basis for the reform was laid down by new laws and state standards of education, which allow implementing NUS principles in practice. These are the Law on Education (2017), the Law on Complete General Secondary Education (2020), as well as the State Standard of Primary Education (2018) and the State Standard of Basic Secondary Education (2020).
The main principles of school education reform and the approximate schedule for the implementation of the reform are set out in the Conceptual Principles of the New Ukrainian School.
A key change for students goes down to new approaches to learning and content of education. Instead of memorizing facts and notions, students acquire competences. It is a dynamic combination of knowledge, skills, abilities, ways of thinking, views, values, and other personal qualities that determine a person’s ability to successfully socialize, conduct professional and/or further educational activities.
The list of competences that students acquire has been developed taking into account «Recommendations of the European Parliament and of the Council on key competences for lifelong learning».
These are the following competences:
- fluency in the official national language;
- ability to communicate in native (if different from the official) and foreign languages;
- mathematical competence;
- competences in the field of natural sciences, engineering and technology;
- innovation;
- environmental competence;
- information and communication competence;
- lifelong learning;
- civic and social competences related to the ideas of democracy, justice, equality, human rights, prosperity and healthy lifestyle, with awareness of equal rights and opportunities;
- cultural competence;
- entrepreneurship and financial literacy.
Common to all competences are cross-cutting skills: reading comprehension, ability to express one’s opinion orally and in writing, critical and systemic thinking, ability to logically justify an opinion, creativity, initiative, ability to constructively manage emotions, assess risks, make decisions, solve problems, ability to cooperate with other people.
The new standards stipulate that teachers must work in different ways, so there is a gradual large-scale retraining of teachers as well.
The new NUS evaluation model assumes that instead of usual scorecards at the end of the year, first-graders receive a Certificate of Achievements. The updated model is based on formative evaluation, which allows drawing conclusions about the learning process, and not just the result (number of errors) and students’ progress.
