For most parents and children, the autumn term is the hardest one given it is the longest and gloomiest of the three. This is the least of Anna Sydoruk’s worries. In her home country of Ukraine, many schools are either totally evacuated, being used as air raid shelters, or, in safer areas, in partial use, and so the return of remote or hybrid learning is the most viable option to keep the education system from crumbling. Sydoruk’s main concern is to ensure that school in Ukraine manages to keep running so that children can continue learning in safety.
Sydoruk is a Ukrainian mother of two living in the UK. She is the COO of Osvitoria, a Ukrainian educational NGO whose current focus is delivering online lessons—and in-person where possible—to schoolchildren all over Ukraine. “Before the war we developed education, now we are just trying to help it survive,” she says. The NGO built its online platform in response to Covid-19 and, after war broke out in February this year, the platform has again proved invaluable for providing education in the face of adversity.
After spending the first 10 days of war in an underground shelter, Sydoruk left Kyiv with her children in early March, first staying with friends in Ternopil, then Lviv, and finally, Warsaw. When she realised the war showed no sign of relenting, she decided to relocate permanently with her children. On 1st May they moved to Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, under the government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme where Anna works remotely on Osvitoria’s initiatives.
Given that Osvitoria’s online platform has averaged four million users per year since 2020 and has enrolled almost six thousand students from occupied regions such as Donbas and Crimea over the past two years, Sydoruk feels optimistic about this academic year. “Russia can occupy our territory, they can put Russian flags everywhere, and they can change hryvnias to roubles but Ukrainians are still Ukrainians. They learn the Ukrainian curriculum in Ukrainian language with Ukrainian teachers. They identify as Ukrainian.” This optimism is still mixed with concern. “The hardest thing is to provide a safe environment for kids. That’s what I worry about the most. The safety situation is unpredictable,” Sydoruk says.
Online schooling cannot prevent the physical damage war does to schools, nor the psychological harm it inflicts on teachers and students. Tamara Ilchenko, the head of Gymnasium A+ in Kyiv, fears the long-term effects of so much online school on both the academic attainment and psychological well-being of her students. “Online learning has shown itself to be much worse for performance because learning isn’t just about knowledge. It’s about socialising, communication, and leadership,” she says. Back when the war began, teachers were prepared practically to teach online as they had done in the pandemic, “but psychologically, how were we to manage? Not everyone could just open Zoom and be in a good mood,” Ilchenko recalls.
Russian forces insist that they only attack military threats in Ukraine, but schools are clearly being targeted as part of a strategy to eliminate Ukrainian identity. So far, 2,608 educational institutions including kindergartens, orphanages, and universities have suffered bombing and shelling—313 have been demolished. Russian troops use the structures of still-standing schools in occupied areas as military bases once all the Ukrainian literature found inside has been destroyed. It is an undeniable attack on Ukrainian language, history, and culture, especially in occupied territories, where the Russian army is trying to impose a new Russian curriculum in schools.
Andriy Bovan, a maths and physics teacher living in Pereiaslav, a town 80 kilometres from Kyiv, joined the Ukrainian territorial defence when war broke out. Instead of working from home, he helped build a roadblock in his town and worked from this checkpoint sometimes up to 12 hours a day. “He would just put the gun to one side, open his laptop and continue his lessons,” Sydoruk recalls. Now that Pereiaslav is safe enough for schools to be in partial use, he spends more of his time teaching online and in-person, the latter of which is still disrupted by the realities of war. “There are some cases where we have to finish lessons earlier if there is an air raid alert and I have to say to the kids, I’ll send their homework by video,” Bovan tells me.
Outside of school hours, he and his “comrades” work in shifts to help protect the community. “We have become much more like activists than soldiers,” he says. Bovan shares Ilchenko’s concerns about the long-lasting effects that the war will have on children. “The war is a huge trauma for their mental health. They watch the news, they hear about children getting assaulted, of course they have ears,” he says.
For Taras (not his real name), a computer science teacher from occupied Kherson, the first six months of war in his home city “was like a horror film. Words cannot describe it. It was hell. It was terrifying every day.” In spite of this, Taras endured the onset of the Russian invasion and gave lessons online, using the technology at his disposal to keep his students learning. “I constantly used VPN services to access internet. If video links didn’t work, I emailed materials to students. One way or another we made it work,” he explains.
That all changed in the first week of August, when the Russian army was informed that Taras was refusing to teach the Russian curriculum—or as he describes it, “propaganda”—so they kidnapped his son for three days. When the Russians finally brought back his son, they threatened Taras, saying, “We’ll return your son right now, but if you object next time, we’ll come with a bag on his head, and we’ll torture him.” The next day Taras got in touch with Sydoruk, who helped him escape with his son to western territory, where he continues to teach online, waiting to return to Kherson as soon as it is safe. “We hope in a month or two the armed forces of Ukraine will blow up the Russian troops so we can return home and teach normally again,” Taras says.
If only it were that simple. Yaroslav, a former history teacher, whose video lessons for Osvitoria amassed hundreds of thousands of views, is now serving in the Ukrainian National Army. “I’m not a military person, I’m a citizen. But this is a big mission that stimulates and inspires me to continue and not give up,” he says. To win the mental struggle is even more important in army ranks than it is in classrooms, and it is clear Yaroslav’s resilience prevails: “I’m sure that we have already won this war in a global context. As for tactically and how long it will carry on, that is another question. We just need to realise the need to keep fighting will be for the best,” he concludes. A few days after we speak, he is moved to the frontline.
On 1st September, Sydoruk visited Osvitoria’s Novopecherska school in Kyiv and could see all her hard work coming to fruition. “It was very emotional because it was the first time lots of these kids had seen each other since the 24th of February and they were so happy,” Sydoruk says, beaming. Ilchenko is back at school with a vengeance. “Thank you, Russia, for making us even more resilient. No-one has done more to make us stronger and in-de-pen-dent.” She emphasises each syllable with intent.
Correction: an earlier version of this article erroneously said that Anna Sydoruk stayed with friends in Chernobyl and was later granted refugee status in the UK. Sydoruk stayed in Ternopil and later relocated to the UK—she does not have refugee status.
