The Committee on Education, Science and Innovation of the Verkhovna Rada at its meeting on September 11 found it impractical to continue the centralized production of gold and silver medals at the expense of the state budget of Ukraine and to award them to schoolchildren.
The MP and member of the committee Natalia Pipa informed about this. In a comment for Babel she noted that the expenses for the production of medals can be canceled already this year.
Natalia Pipa said that for 2025 there was a request to allocate 4.6 million hryvnias from the state budget for gold medals and over a million hryvnias for silver medals.
According to the Prozorro website, the State Enterprise "Inforesurs" had the following orders:
- in 2023, 21 300 school medals (16 700 gold and 4 600 silver) worth 1 868 950 hryvnias were produced;
- in 2022, 20 600 medals for graduates (15 900 gold and 4 700 silver) worth 1 771 050 hryvnias were produced.
The question of the appropriateness of school medals was previously raised on the website of the educational ombudsman. The average cost of manufacturing medals in 2023 was 87 hryvnias, in 2022 — 86, and in 2020 — 77. That is, in three years, the price increased by 10 hryvnias. And although the price for the production of each individual medal seems insignificant, in general, over the past two years, it is more than a million budget funds, the website said.
Pipa said that over 66 000 medals have been produced in Ukraine over the past five years. And in 2024, they were produced twice as much as in 2020, at the same time, the MP emphasizes, the level of knowledge of schoolchildren and the number of students decreased.
According to her, the number of medals does not reflect the quality of education, and in general it is an "outdated practice" that is widespread only in post-Soviet countries. At the meeting of the Committee, the Educational Ombudsman Service noted that there is no such experience in Europe and the rest of the world. And after the abolition of the centralized production of medals in Ukraine, each educational institution will be able to independently apply any incentives to schoolchildren.
Currently, the law "On comprehensive general secondary education" provides that educational institutions must independently determine how to encourage and award students — and it will remain so, simply without spending from the state budget specifically on the medal.
Pipa also clarified that the medals do not give graduates any advantages when entering a higher educational institution — they are only a moral encouragement for students and parents.