The draft State Budget of Ukraine for 2025 proposes to lift the ban on the privatisation of property of state higher education institutions, according to Komersant ukrainskyi
Thus, paragraph 3 of the final provisions proposes to “suspend for 2025” a number of legislative provisions, including part four of Article 80 of the Law of Ukraine “On Education”. This provision in the Law of Ukraine “On Education” reads as follows:
The facilities and property of state and municipal educational institutions shall not be subject to privatisation or use for carrying out activities not provided for by special laws, except for leasing for the purpose of providing services that cannot be provided directly by educational institutions related to the educational process or servicing participants in the educational process, taking into account the determination by the authorised management body of the possibility of using state or municipal real estate in accordance with the law.
For this purpose, it is also proposed to suspend the effect of paragraph forty-five of part two of Article 4 of the Law of Ukraine “On Privatisation of State and Communal Property” in terms of the prohibition of privatisation of premises of state higher education institutions. This paragraph stipulates that the premises of state educational institutions are not subject to privatisation.
Thus, if the Verkhovna Rada approves this proposal of the government, the privatisation of property and premises of state kindergartens, schools, institutes, universities, etc. will become possible in 2025.
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As a reminder, Ukraine continues to optimise its educational institutions, one of the components of which is the closure of schools and universities. Thus, in 2023, the State Education Quality Service was concerned that in territorial communities
“the actual occupancy of general secondary education institutions (GSEIs) is significantly lower than the design capacity. In some GSEIs, the occupancy rate was only 20-40% of the design capacity. At the same time, traditionally, in rural areas, classroom occupancy rates are below the community average.”
The Service claims that maintaining such schools is economically unprofitable.
The Ministry of Education is also determined to optimise the network of higher education institutions. Deputy Minister of Education Mykhailo Vynnytskyi claims that the ministry plans to reduce the number of public higher education institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Education and Science to 100 from the current 140.