Today, about 1 million Ukrainian schoolchildren study remotely. As a result, children not only learn less, but also lose the opportunity to socialise, communicate with peers, and develop leadership skills.

To overcome the significant educational losses and gaps, Mykhailo Fedorov, Deputy Prime Minister for Innovation, Education, Science and Technology Development and Minister of Digital Transformation, together with the Ministry of Education and Science, is implementing a comprehensive School Offline strategy. On the air of the Rada TV channel, the Deputy Prime Minister told how children are going to return to full-time education and what will help improve the quality of online education.

“A key prerequisite for improving the quality of education is children’s access to safe face-to-face learning. More than 600,000 children study online in Ukraine, and another 400,000 study abroad. Our task is to return about 300,000 Ukrainian children to full-time education. To do this, we are making comprehensive decisions to create safe conditions for face-to-face learning: we are building shelters, purchasing buses, and providing gadgets for teachers and children,” said Mykhailo Fedorov.

As part of the policy, the School Offline uses modern technological solutions. In particular, the Palantir product. It structures and analyses a large amount of data and then turns it into reports, texts, and applications. For example, in a few seconds, it finds out how many Ukrainian schools have been destroyed and what is needed to rebuild them, how many areas are mined and how long the demining will take, etc.

“This is one of the world’s best IT solutions for this. We entered all the shelling that took place on the territory of Ukraine into the system and analysed where it could potentially take place, how many children live in a particular area, what are the needs for buses, gadgets, etc. Based on this information and other data, we are modelling the network of schools where there is the greatest need to build underground facilities or bomb shelters,” added Mykhailo Fedorov.

The School Offline refers to the entire network of schools. And where it is impossible to return to safe face-to-face education, conditions will be created for high-quality and effective distance education.