Russian strikes on publishers' warehouses in Ukraine have destroyed 1.2 million textbooks - nearly a tenth of the entire available print run. How will Ukrainian children who start school on September 1st learn?
On the eve of the new school year, schools in Ukraine are facing a shortage of textbooks. Publishers printed them on time, but were unable to deliver them to schools, as Russian strikes on warehouses on July 19 and August 1 destroyed 1.2 million textbooks - approximately 9.5% of the entire print run printed this year. In monetary terms, the damage reaches 150 million Ukrainian hryvnias.
The shortage of textbooks will affect students in the fourth and ninth grades
The director of the state "Institute for Modernization of Educational Content" Yevgeny Bazhenkov told DV that textbooks for each grade are printed every five years. 2026 is the year in which textbooks for students in the fourth and ninth grades should be provided. Now, students in these two specific grades, for which textbooks were printed in all subjects, including textbooks for Ukrainian schools abroad, with a total circulation of about 13 million copies, may be partially left without textbooks. As a result of the Russian shelling, the circulation of textbooks in foreign languages, including English and German, Ukrainian, history of Ukraine and others, has been affected. Some circulations have been partially destroyed, and in several subjects – completely.
Will they manage to deliver the textbooks on time?
According to the plan, ninth-graders were supposed to receive their textbooks by September 1, and fourth-graders by October 1. This schedule is related to the capacity of the printing houses: they can print about 1.5 million textbooks per month, and printing begins in April. “To date, over 70 percent of the textbooks are already in educational institutions, and about 20 percent are in the process of being delivered. Deliveries for ninth-graders by September 1 are about 90 percent,” says Bazhenkov.
The destroyed copies will be reprinted and delivered with a certain delay by October 1 or November 1. But there are not enough funds for this, since the total budget for printing textbooks this year amounted to about 2 billion Ukrainian hryvnias. These funds were sufficient. However, the problem is not only related to the destruction of warehouses with finished products. Russian strikes have damaged printing facilities, which is why orders have to be transferred to other production facilities.
Electronic teaching aids as a backup option
While the destroyed textbooks are being printed, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine advises schools to work with digital versions. “On September 1, students in Ukraine will have access to information: some with a paper textbook, others with an electronic textbook. That is, every child will have access to the textbook in paper or electronic format”, assured the Minister of Education Andriy Butenko in a comment to “Telegraph”. Electronic copies of textbooks in Ukraine are available to everyone from the 1st to the 11th grade. Anyone can download them, not just students: parents can print out individual sections or pages independently or at school. In addition, there are interactive electronic applications - these are full-fledged electronic textbooks with interactive materials and tasks.
“Digital textbooks are a good alternative. My child's printed textbooks are kept at home, he does his homework on them, and goes to lessons with a tablet. This way, the school backpack is not too heavy and the child's back is stronger. There are children who, on the contrary, work on the computer at home using electronic textbooks, which is convenient”, the mother of an eighth-grader from Kiev told DW. However, in the regions around the front, digital solutions are faced with the lack of electricity and Internet connection. Therefore, the possibility of downloading the textbook and working with it offline is currently being studied together with publishers. As for the technology, according to Bazhenkov, most schools have Internet access and computers.