School graduates will no longer receive gold and silver medals
13 February 20:19
School graduates will no longer receive gold and silver medals for academic achievements.
This is stated in the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.
Instead of medals, the certificate will read: “On obtaining a complete general secondary education with honors.”
The official designations will also change: instead of “ZM” (gold medal) and “SM” (silver medal), “W” (with honors) will be used. At the same time, this entry was already in effect in previous documents on education.
Earlier, at a meeting on September 11, the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Education, Science and Innovation recognized that it was inappropriate to continue centralized production of gold and silver medals at the expense of the state budget of Ukraine and awarding them to schoolchildren.
At the time, MP and committee member Natalia Pipa said that for 2025, there was a request to allocate UAH 4.6 million from the state budget for gold medals and more than a million for silver medals.
According to the Prozorro website, the state-owned Inforesource enterprise has received such orders in previous years:
- in 2023, 21,300 school medals (16,700 gold and 4,600 silver) were produced for UAH 1,868,950;
- in 2022, 20,600 medals for graduates were produced (15,900 gold and 4,700 silver) for UAH 1,771,050.
The issue of the appropriateness of school medals was previously raised on the website of the Education Ombudsman.
The average cost of making medals in 2023 was UAH 87, in 2022 – UAH 86, and in 2020 – UAH 77. That is, the price has increased by 10 hryvnias in three years. And although the price for the production of each individual medal seems insignificant, in total, over the past two years, it has amounted to more than a million budget funds, the website said.
Pipa said that over the past five years, more than 66,000 medals have been made in Ukraine. And in 2024, twice as many were made as in 2020, while the MP emphasizes that the level of knowledge of schoolchildren and the number of students have decreased.
According to her, the number of medals does not reflect the quality of education, and in general, this is an “outdated practice” that is common only in post-Soviet countries.
At the Committee’s meeting, the Education Ombudsman Service noted that there is no such experience in Europe or the rest of the world. And after the centralized production of medals in Ukraine is abolished, each educational institution will be able to independently apply any rewards to students.
Currently, the law “On Complete General Secondary Education” stipulates that educational institutions must independently determine how to encourage and reward students. This will remain the case, but without the state budget spending on medals.
Medals do not provide graduates with any advantages when applying to a higher education institution – they are only a moral encouragement for students and parents.
