Despite the third year of the full-scale invasion, 2024 was full of interesting projects, reliable partners, and inspired children. Our team has been supporting and enhancing the Ukrainian school education system for 8 years. In this article, we want to tell you about our achievements and key figures for 2024. They are measured in tons and millions, and most importantly, in every happy child who can master difficult subjects, catch up with the school curriculum, learn to write incredible essays, gain confidence in their English, and much more thanks to Smart Osvita’s projects.
The flagship Smart Osvita’s project is the New Ukrainian School media about education
The New Ukrainian School website is one of Ukraine’s largest media about education. It was created in 2017 to communicate and advocate for the NUS reform. Today, it provides detailed information about preschool and general secondary education in Ukraine, disseminates the best foreign educational practices, and gives teachers interesting ideas and ready-made solutions for lessons or homework. In addition, the NUS media is a platform for sharing experiences and communication between educators, officials, and parents.
In 2024, the team published 1554 news, 304 articles, and 31 legal explanations, which amounts to more than 9.3 million views on the website, with an average of 413,000 unique readers per month! The media outlet also introduced new website formats: reader clubs and the “We Recently” section.
In addition, the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) and Detector Media included NUS Media in the Recommended Media Map (among 205 Ukrainian media that meet the criteria of transparency, professional standards, and journalistic ethics).
Scaling up and expanding the psychological department
During this year, the psychology team relaunched the Resilience.help platform and launched a feedback form for educators to ask questions to mental health experts and receive professional advice. Over the year, about 20,000 unique readers visited the site and viewed the materials 40,000 times.
Also, this year, the psychological department became present on social media. We created a Facebook page for the department, and since September this year, we have had more than 1,000 subscribers and 300,000 views.
In 2024, we scaled up the psychological department. We studied the impact of the Psycho-Emotional State of Educators training program on their readiness to provide psychosocial support to students in partnership with the international organization Americares, with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science. The team held an expert discussion of the study results and received support from the Reforms Delivery Office to scale the program into the state education system.
In addition, we presented the Psychosocial Support for Educators program to a circle of experts from the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ukrainian Institute for Educational Development (UIED), regional educational centers, and postgraduate education institutes. This program has been completed and certified by 418 school teachers, 61 psychologists, and 30 university students. Now, the team is working on its widespread implementation in the Ukrainian education system.
This year, trainings were conducted by Natalia Podolyak, a family and child psychotherapist (who works in the areas of CBT, EMDR, and CFP), according to the following training programs:
- A professional development program for teachers: building psychological competence – «Losses and ways to cope with them».
- An in-service training program for teachers on developing psychological competence – «Children of war and work with them». 241 participants attended it.
- The training program «Professional Development Program for Teachers and Staff on Improving Psychological Self-Help Skills (EMDR)». 30 teachers attended this program.
A total of 750 school teachers and psychologists were trained in 2024 by our psychological department.
In 2024, we launched a unique program for teenagers called SPARK Resilience, which has trained 96 children. During the classes, children learned to build stress resistance and develop emotional intelligence. The British NGO Partnership for Children provided Smart Osvita with SPARK Resilience, a school-based social and emotional learning program for adolescents based on positive psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy.
Also this year, with the support of Switzerland, we printed sets of 8 games and workshops by Svitlana Royz, which will be sent to 3000 community schools and inclusive resource centres throughout Ukraine in January.
Everyone can download the games here and use them online. The proposed materials will contribute to students’ emotional development and help teachers and school psychologists implement practices for the psychological support of children in the school environment.
Chest for Shelter — we delivered almost 9 tons of useful items in 2024
This year, we delivered the chests to 106 schools in the de-occupied, frontline, or destroyed and rebuilt areas, a record number of coverage for us in all three years of the project’s existence. Now, over 10 thousand children can relieve stress and spend time in a shelter during air raids with interest and benefit.
The total weight of the shipped chests is 8.9 tons per this year (the weight of 1 set of items varies from 50 to 100 kg, depending on the packaging and filling features).
The Stay with Ukraine project has expanded to primary schools
The Stay with Ukraine project has reached a new milestone — we have launched a project for children in 3-4 grades to learn Ukrainian as a second functional language in a foreign language environment. It is the first project of its kind in Ukraine.
In the first year of the course, we engaged 10 teachers and 142 primary school students who are currently abroad due to the Russian invasion and have little or no opportunity to study in a Ukrainian school or have a family form of education.
Also, in May, the second year of the «Stay with Ukraine» project for 5-11 grades ended. This year, we engaged 380 more children than last year. Thus, in 2024, 1700 children studied in the project, who are now in more than 25 countries worldwide!
Learn with Your Ears — we launched new subjects, topics and grades
This year, we have reached half a million listens to our audio lessons on podcast platforms, and the Learn with Your Ears team has expanded with extracurricular courses on the History of Crimea and Sex Education, and is working hard to release lessons on Environmental Awareness and Introduction to STEM.
Currently, 600+ lessons are available for everyone to listen to on the project’s website and 5 platforms: Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcast, NV, and Megogo. In total, the project team has counted about half a million listens and more than 300 thousand social media reach on all platforms! Also, the number of podcast and social media subscribers has doubled compared to 2023 and now stands at 13700 subscribers.
Moreover, The History of Crimea course took 3rd place in the Historical Podcast category at the Podcast Awards by the Megogo platform. In addition to our audio lessons, there were 60 other podcasts shortlisted for the award.
Now I Know project — for the third year in a row, we have been helping children to take over for educational losses
This year, we have improved the curriculum and changed 90% of the project content, following the Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment recommendations. The Now I Know project’s curriculum is permeated with the acquisition of meta-competencies along with subject knowledge, and we have also paid great attention to reading competence. Tasks in Ukrainian language, along with maths and entrance and exit tests in each subject, are aligned with a competency map to track learning progress.
In total, 838 children attended the course in 2024! The teachers involved in the project were trained in several areas before starting. Also, teachers received methodological support throughout the project, and this year, there was psychological support for the project participants.
The Ukraine Speaks English project attracts more and more volunteers from all over the world
Our free online English classes with foreign volunteer teachers for Ukrainian children aged 4-18 brought together 27 new volunteer teachers from around the world this year. Children joined the classes as many as 26 thousand times! Also, this year, we taught 866 lessons and conducted 14 courses with volunteer teachers in schools from different regions of Ukraine. Thanks to our volunteer teachers, children practised yoga, studied maths, read about Harry Potter, created various crafts, learned to code, and did many other activities in English!
Since March 2022, we have engaged more than 170 volunteer English teachers from Canada, Australia, Portugal, Austria, Turkey, the United States, Spain, Japan, and India.
The National Project: Writing an Essay goes to schools
This year, we created a network of teacher ambassadors, conducted offline training for more than 50 teachers, and launched the project’s website and essay contest, which attracted 299 students.
This year, we also published an anthology of 57 non-fiction texts for grades 8–11 students and a teacher’s guide. The National Project: Writing an Essay has engaged 2560 students, 53 schools, and 60 teachers.
The Dopamine for Education podcast: discussions on new topics and with new speakers
This year’s Season 4 of the podcast was the largest in the project’s history and included 10 episodes. In Season 4, our topics included teaching Science in Ukraine, the reform of specialised secondary education and changes in higher education, support for children’s efforts in learning, teachers entering the profession, the state in de-occupying cities, and more. This season, we received 3,390 listens and 29,514 views of text transcripts.
The most quoted episode in the media was the conversation with Mykhailo Vynnytskyi: «A sincere conversation about higher education in Ukraine: the future of the grant system, university consolidation, brain drain, and postgraduate studies.»
New start of the Integrity Lessons course
Our Integrity Lessons course, developed in 2021 for grades 3-4, has become part of a course for teachers from the Integrity Office of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP). Our lessons will help educators form values in young people and teach them how to prevent corrupt practices.
We thank all our volunteers and partners for making this kaleidoscope of incredible achievements and events possible! We are also sincerely grateful to the children for joining our classes even in the summer and to their parents for their trust and involvement.
We wish you happy holidays and look forward to seeing you in the New Year. May it bring even more achievements and, most importantly, victory for Ukraine and peace!
