No abstract

The generation of the competence education idea in Ukraine based on the EU benchmarks is studied. It is underlined that the transformation of the national education into the competence base is a component of the European integration of Ukraine. The authors made conclusion that the Ukrainian education has gone from proclaiming the idea of the competence education, its conceptual justification to implementation. The research results evidence that the support of the competence idea at the level of educational policy is the most successful in Ukraine. At the same time, at the implementation level the competence idea meets a number of challenges due to the novelty of a clear correlation between strategic, didactic and methodological levels. The authors conclude that the problem of the formation of key competences, firstly of transversal or cross-curricular ones, remains underdeveloped; the aspects of crosscurricular links and integration of the education content requires further development; the level of assessing younger students in competencies is even more underdeveloped. On the other hand, the authors generalise that common globalization challenges, powerful integration processes in Europe, Europeanization affecting the European countries outside the EU borders contribute greatly to the synchronization of the education in Ukraine with EU standards.

The adoption of the Lisbon Strategy (2000) and of the European Reference Framework on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (2006) launched a competence-based approach in the EU member states education systems. During the last decade the concept of competence greatly influenced the education policy, school curricula and assessment models. The competence approach serves as an Europeanisation tool harmonising the education systems in order to raise their quality and, thus, to make the EU economy competent in the world. The Ukrainian education is under great influence of pan-European tendencies and policies that results in its Europeanisation. The competence approach is one of the tools of this process at the level of school education. Ukraine has travelled long pass from the discussion and definition of competences to the selection and adoption at the nationwide level. Still, this process is accompanied by a number of challenges that make the European experiences significant for the Ukrainian education in the process of its integration into the European education space.

The publication provides a comprehensive analysis of the state and development of national education over the 30 years of Ukraine’s independence, identifies current problems in education, ascertains the causes of their emergence, offers scientifically reasoned ways to modernise domestic education in the context of globalisation, European integration, innovative development, and national self-identification. Designed for legislators, state officials, education institutions leaders, teaching and academic staff, the general public, all those who seek to increase the competitiveness of Ukrainian education in the context of civilisation changes.

The article presents the results of a survey of primary education specialists on the organization of primary school education in the period after the beginning of Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and May 31, 2022 (the official end of the 2021–2022 academic year). The survey was conducted by scholars of the Institute of Pedagogy of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine. The article is based on the legislative and regulatory documents governing the legal regime of martial law in Ukraine and the peculiarities of the functioning of the Ukrainian education system during this period; analytical works, including the author’s own, on the organization of education under martial law; characteristics of primary education: The guidelines of international organizations on the organization of education in times of war were also taken into account. The results of the survey showed that primaryeducation in Ukraine continued to function after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, despite serious challenges (destruction or damage to educational institutions due to bombing and shelling, forced displacement of teachers and parents with children, numerous psychological traumas of teachers and children, occupation of part of the territory of Ukraine and genocide of the Ukrainian people in the occupied territories). This became possible both due to the creation of the foundations of institutional and legal regulation of the educational sphere for the period of martial law by the Ukrainian authorities, and to the specialists of primary education: their civic position, moral responsibility, professional qualifications. The conclusions developed on the basis of the respondents’ answers outline possible options for organizing primary education in war conditions. The relevance of further development of the distance learning format in Ukraine under martial law and the implementation of a systemic policy of the authorities to support teachers, which should include both psychological support and the development of methodological support for teaching in war conditions, emphasized.