The government allocated UAH 5 billion for shelters in schools to bring students back online

The government allocated another 5 billion hryvnias from the budget for shelter in schools and vocational schools in eight front-line and border regions. The goal is to bring students back to offline learning.

This was reported by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Deputy Prime Minister for Innovation, Development of Education, Science and Technology, Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov.

With the allocated money, bomb shelters will be built in 53 schools and 24 institutions of vocational technical institutes in Chernihiv, Kherson, Kharkiv, Sumy, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk regions. This will help return about 66 000 children to full-time education. 57 shelters are already under construction.

In addition, the government has allocated almost 216 million hryvnias for school buses that will take children to schools where there are shelters. The ministers expect that with this money and in co-financing with local budgets, they will purchase at least 500 school buses in 2024. So far, they have managed to buy 120 buses.

In general, 2.5 billion hryvnias have already been planned in the state budget for the construction of school shelters and 1 billion hryvnias for the purchase of school buses.

Currently, more than 600 000 children are studying remotely in Ukraine. There are 390 000 children abroad.