The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, at its meeting on June 17, adopted a resolution on the return of funds paid for the provision of services for the practice External Independent Testing (EIT) in 2020.

In his opening statement during the meeting of the Government, the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal stressed that "it is necessary to put an end to the issue of external evaluation in order to avoid political squabbles and rumors, which are now actively spreading."

"Firstly, today we are adopting a resolution to return the funds for the practice EIT, and secondly, currently there are no grounds to abandon the EIT, it will take place according to a certain plan. There will be no return of corruption to universities by abolishing the EIT. Our children must have equal access to education and they will have it," the Prime Minister assured.

"For our part, we will exert every effort to make the admission campaign comfortable and safe for applicants. We are now intensively preparing places for safe testing. We have the assistance here by Naftogaz, UNICEF, our European and international partners, who have already shipped personal protective equipment for these needs to almost every region and to every point of external testing," added Denys Shmyhal.

Presenting the draft resolution, acting Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Liubomyra Mandzii explained that the payment of funds to the participants of the practice EIT will take place in the near future and will be made through offices of Privatbank.

"Participants of the practice external evaluation will receive a notification from the bank with information about crediting funds to the card. Those who do not have a card will be notified that the card with the funds is waiting for them in the nearest branch of Privatbank," explained Lubomyra Mandzii.

Apart from that, she refuted information in media about the Government's intentions to cancel this year's external independent evaluation. "The media spread false information that a bill on the abolition of external evaluation has been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada. I want to clarify that the bill does not cancel the external evaluation, as the media write, it transfers makes the state final certification in the form of external testing into the voluntary process," explained Liubomyra Mandzii.