ENGSix Ukrainian mothers in six different countries on sending their kids to schools abroad

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, millions of Ukrainian mothers and their children have left Ukraine. The UN estimates that there are currently around 5 million Ukrainian refugees. Hoping for a prompt return to Ukraine, some parents held off on enrolling their kids in local schools, relying instead on online classes offered by their schools in Ukraine. But children need to socialise – and can suffer if unable to spend time with their peers – and parents can use the personal space school provides as well to look for work. Attending local schools has become a crucial aspect of the socialisation and adaptation of Ukrainian refugees abroad.

We spoke to six mothers living in six different countries about sending their kids to school outside of Ukraine, how the education experience differs abroad, what the Ukrainian education system could borrow from their new schools, and what they’d be glad to leave behind when they come back home.

Цей текст також можна прочитати українською.

We have lived in the town of Santander in northern Spain since the first days of March. When we arrived, my son Venia was four and a half and my daughter Sonia was 11 and a half. Sonia was in fifth grade and Venia in kindergarten. In Spain, kids start going to school at one. At age four or five they start learning the compulsory curriculum. Spanish kids are enrolled at school based on the year they were born in. Venia was born in 2017, so it was time for him to go to school.

At first Sonia didn’t attend school here; we weren’t planning to stay that long. She was studying online, based on the curriculum of her school in Kyiv. Now she’s enrolled in a distance learning program in Ukraine: she studies on her own and takes tests. She only started attending a local school recently; given her year of birth, she’s in seventh grade now.

In Spain you can choose the school to send your kids to. When you submit your documents, you list the schools you’d like your kids to attend and they make a decision based on availability.

We sent Venia to school straight away because he’s very active and playful. He was finding it difficult to stay at home. It was easy for us to enrol, we got all the documents together and Venia was able to start his classes the next day. Other kids were eager to meet him, they really welcomed him.

Young kids in Spanish schools wear these pink smocks over their uniforms to protect their clothes if the kids get all dirty. Their teacher also wears a smock like that. When we came to enrol, other parents brought lots of clothes and school uniform items for Venia. We just had to bring the smock. When I said we didn’t have one, the teacher offered us a spare one she had in the classroom – though it had another kid’s name on it. When Venia got to school the next morning, the teacher gave him a smock which had his name, Veniamin, neatly hand-stitched on it in colourful thread. I asked the teacher who’d stitched it, and she said it was her mom. I was very moved.

Overall, Spanish teachers have a lot of empathy. A month or so after Venia started going to school, the school was preparing to celebrate Father’s Day and was planning a bunch of creative activities around it. A few days before that, the teacher asked me if it would be okay for her to come up with alternative activities for Venia, different from those other kids would be doing, to spare his feelings since he was far from his dad.

Everything was a bit harder with Sophia; we enrolled her this summer. Kids her age, born in 2010, are set to transition from primary to high school this year (there is no secondary school in Spain), as they enter seventh grade. Kids from abroad have to sit a test in order to be allowed to start high school. We had to wait till September for Sophia to take the test because the person in charge of administering it was on holiday all summer. We got there for Sonia to sit the test in the first days of September, but it was just the beginning of a protracted bureaucratic process. The test was cancelled for Ukrainian children due to the stress they suffered. But there were still lots of documents to sort out. Then we waited for two weeks for the lists [of kids for different schools] to be formed, and then Sonia was left out from those lists because someone forgot to put her name down. So Sophia wasn’t able to start the school year at the same time as her classmates.

While Veniamin is very adaptable and easily finds his way around new people, because he sees the opportunity to play with other kids as a joy, Sophia is completely different. She is an introvert and doesn’t like new things, so she was really anxious. It was a huge stress for her, to overcome herself and go to a new school where everyone speaks a different language. But her school in Ukraine provided a very high standard of education and she speaks good English. The school we chose in Spain is also bilingual. Most children can speak English with her. Teachers there were aware of Sonia during her first days and took good care of her. They speak English with her. So she does feel like she’s treated well here. Spanish schools are very inclusive to new kids. Ukrainian refugees aren’t the first ones to arrive here. Kids are welcoming towards newcomers because they’ve already had to welcome refugees from Syria and other countries. They even have books about children fleeing war in their library.

I think that the main difference between the Ukrainian and the Spanish educational systems is the absence of stress. The main emphasis in their schools is on creating a stress-free study environment. They pay more attention to emotions and are more supportive than Ukrainian teachers academically.

In Spain being a teacher is prestigious. Teachers are paid good wages, have stable jobs, and long holidays. You’ve got to work hard to become a teacher here. There are almost no private schools here and attendance to those that do exist is sponsored by the state. Even private schools and kindergartens here don’t cost more than 70 euros. That’s how much our school costs. That’s 10 or 12 times less than what we paid for a similar education in Ukraine.

When we arrived in Antwerp in March, I wasn’t looking for a school for the girls. They joined online classes in their schools in Ukraine, we took a lot of walks together. This helped save us emotionally. Once we came across a place with very good energy, we didn’t want to leave. We later found out that it was part of a school – a place where parents lingered after picking their kids up, not rushing anywhere, not rushing their kids. They talk to each other, drink wine, there’s music, some people play basketball. That’s when I realised I wanted to send my girls to that school.

At the time, special classes for kids from Ukraine were being formed: most of the teaching was in Ukrainian, but there was an emphasis on learning Dutch. But I knew that the girls would never find peace in a class like that. They’d listen to other kids’ stories, see pain and hurt in their eyes; I wanted to protect them from that. That’s why I started looking for a normal school with a Belgian curriculum.

The owner of the house where we lived for a while said that her children went to a wonderful arts school. She wrote a letter to the principal asking them to enrol us. One of our new acquaintances, a Ukrainian woman who had arrived in Belgium a bit before us, said that her daughter was also attending a very nice school – she decided to also write a letter to that school’s principal. In the end, it turned out that they both wrote to the principal of the same school. He agreed to admit us. In Ukraine, Varvara would have been in second grade and Vasylisa in first. In Belgium, however, kids are enrolled based on their year of birth, so Varia went to third grade and Vasia remained in first.

When we first came to meet the girls’ new classmates and teachers, they were asked what their names were and how they’d like to be called. Varvara became Barbara and Vasylisa became Basil. Now everyone just calls her Vasia, though their ‘s’ sounds more like a ‘z’.

The school welcomed the girls. There’s lots of arts and crafts, lots of classes. The teachers are emphatic and the kids friendly. All the teaching is in Dutch but [everyone] translates things for the girls into English. But [that means] you have to know English as well. The girls use their tablets to translate some of the things into Ukrainian.

Vasylisa is finding it easy: she’s learning new letters and words with the other kids, they’re teaching her how to pronounce words, helping her figure out different sounds. There’s a playground in the courtyard, she’s got sandwiches in her backpack – she doesn’t need anything else. It’s harder for Varvara, she’s more sensitive. She’s struggling and finds it all slightly scary. She struggles with misunderstandings. But her teachers give her a lot of support and help her lots.

As of September, Ukrainian children will be able to take additional Dutch lessons, but [our] teachers are telling [us] everything will be alright. They say it’s not good grades that matter but being able to trust the space that you’re in.

There’s no school uniform and the school doesn’t impose any particular dress code. The other day Vasia wore a leopard-print towelling hoodie. Teachers notice what the kids are wearing and always compliment them.

I like the fact that teachers here are more down-to-earth. If you run into one of them on the street, the conversation will never be particularly formal, they’re genuinely interested in hearing about how you’re doing. They sing with the kids and pretend they’re falling asleep if someone is talking for a long time. They don’t focus exclusively on academic excellence but encourage a desire to learn, to discover new things. Everyone here says that Ukrainian children are academically very advanced and are better at solving maths equations, but are rarely prepared to engage in spontaneous, creative activities.

I like that the kids are well taken care of here. We hardly had to buy anything ahead of the school year, except for lunch-boxes. I like that you can’t skip social gatherings the school organises unless you have a valid excuse – though I do find it difficult to let go and to let kids be kids. I still feel like I have to find something else for them to learn, some new multiplication table or something.

My daughters have taken to calling their school Kurazh Bazar, after the lively charity market in Kyiv, because something is always happening here. For example, on the last day of school all of the primary school pupils (first through sixth grade) sang Oi u luzi chervona kalyna [Ukrainian folk song] together. Varia taught everyone to sing the Ukrainian words correctly.

We stopped joining online classes at our Ukrainian school, the girls have too much stress and worry in their lives already. The only classes they’re still attending are their favourite dance classes and an acting course.

I, my son, and our two cats arrived in the UK by car on 1 April. We drove across all of Europe, took a ferry across the English Channel and then found our way to Wales. Now we live on a farm outside of Cardiff, the capital of Wales, not far from the city. We’re in a wonderful town near Cowbridge, where Tymur’s school is. It’s a great school by local standards, actually one of the best public schools in Wales. It’s a large school and it’s got good ratings and a welcoming atmosphere. Everyone there is proud that there’s no bullying, under any circumstances.

My son Tymur turned 13 here. In Ukraine, he was in sixth grade because he started school a bit later than other kids, at seven. Here, he was admitted straight into eighth grade because in Wales kids go to school aged four. Ukrainian children are automatically sent to age-appropriate grades, without first having their knowledge tested; they’re just put in the same grade as their peers. Tymur graduated from eighth grade this summer, now he’s started ninth grade. School doesn’t end till July in the UK and school holidays are only six weeks. [In Ukraine, the school year runs from 1 September to 31 May, with a three-month summer holiday.]

You have to get a visa to be allowed entry in the UK. It’s rather difficult to obtain a visa these days. The Homes for Ukraine program stipulates that you find a sponsor, a family that is prepared to host you for six months. So you get free housing, government aid and, accordingly, a right to enter the country and remain here for three years; you’re also granted the right to work.

We’ve chosen our host because she mentioned that she lived close to this school, one of the best schools in Wales. Because we were among the first Ukrainians to arrive in the UK, Tymur was immediately admitted to the school, there were no problems. As far as I know, it’s much more difficult to get a place there now.

We’ve adapted quite easily. Tymur’s English was quite good already, and Welsh people are really very open and kind – they’re really supporting us.

My son really wants to make friends, to talk to people, but he’s not very good at initiating conversations. [In Ukraine], you’re lucky if you become part of an established group, if you’re not good at initiating friendships yourself. Here, on the other hand, kids automatically welcome you, the local culture, the habit of small talk makes you feel like people are taking interest in you. My son immediately felt at ease here: finally people were interested in how he was doing.

I signed him up to a navy cadet club straightaway. At first I thought they’d maybe be rowing or something, but it turned out these are real cadets: they have uniforms, they’re learning to march. My son is really enjoying it, despite having protested against wearing any sort of uniform in Ukraine. Here he wears a school uniform and also this cadet uniform.

In brief, the school’s approach to kids is the main difference [between Wales and Ukraine]. It’s a unique skill: on the one hand, maintaining distance between kids and adults, and on the other, having and showing complete respect for the children as equals. A real respect, without frivolity or patronising.

For example, when we were told Tymur would have to come in for an interview, we thought he’d have to sit a test, that he’d be asked questions; he was very nervous. But we were greeted by three teachers, all with smiles on their faces. They gave Tymur an hour-long tour of the school building, told him how going to school would be good for him, and how everyone in the school would help him.

Many Ukrainian parents are complaining about the curriculum here being less rigorous. In reality, it’s not any less rigorous; kids are just given fewer facts to memorise and encouraged to develop critical thinking, analysis and logical reasoning.

For example, language and literature are not two separate subjects. They’re learning language through literature: they read a text, analyse and discuss it, and learn to think and argue logically.

One thing I find difficult as a mom who has to take care of it, is the strict school uniform. It really came as a surprise to me that school shoes must be black, undecorated – and with black soles. My Tymur doesn’t like classic shoes and it was a bit of an effort to find black-soled sneakers. And of course he hardly wears any of the shoes we’d bought for him earlier because he mostly goes to school, and has to wear black-soled shoes there.

We’ve also found the food at the school canteen pretty strange. There are two lunch breaks at school, and during both kids are served pizza, burgers, and fries. Where’s Klopotenko when you need him! [she laughs] 

Tymur is also continuing to study in Ukraine. We’ve chosen a form of study which allows him to take only the necessary tests and exams. But so far it’s been quite chaotic. If he tries to attend online classes in Ukraine, he just won’t have any free time at all. So we’re thinking of dropping everything other than Ukrainian language and history classes. He can learn the rest of the subjects here.

My son Illia turned eight 10 days before the [full-scale] war started. He’s in third grade now, both in Ukraine and in Austria. We’ve been living in Vienna since 19 March.

A family who hosted us when we first arrived also helped us enrol in a local school. They just rang their children’s school, and Illia started attending school as a third-grader in late March. Judging by what other parents say, we’ve been lucky both with the school and with being able to get into it; some Ukrainian kids in Austria have still not been placed in schools.

None of the teachers in our school here speak Ukrainian or (thankfully) Russian. They only speak English and German. There are only a few children other than Illia who don’t speak German as their first language. The school has organised additional classes for them. Overall though, he spent the last few months of second grade studying the first-grade curriculum: letters, pictures, simple words, etc. Maths was easier; he was able to solve problems within the first couple of months because he understood (or guessed) what they were about.

Right now Illia is studying the third grade curriculum. They’ve got lots of classes where they make something; they spend lots of time outside and have weekly school trips, which range from going to park or a forest (which involves building forts and dens) to visiting a local farm or the oldest ice cream shop in the region.

The kids really welcomed Illia and helped him with everything; he made friends quickly (though I can’t imagine how they would have communicated early on) and even taught them some Ukrainian words.

One of Illia’s classmates was Russian (though born in Austria). This boy was very nice to Illia in the first few days and helped him with translating from German, but then started bullying him about the war. Fortunately, the school is strict on bullying and the teachers quickly cut those interactions short. But now Illia’s learned again that Russians are Russians wherever they go.

From early on Illia’s teachers gave him lots of feedback on his studies and how they thought he was adapting. They’re noting his good grasp of maths and how quickly he’s learning German, his diligence. I think kids are given more freedom at school here, though their mistakes are still corrected with red ink. Kids feel more equal with their teachers, though we were also very lucky with teachers in Ukraine.

When he was in second grade, Illia’s schoolwork wasn’t graded because his German wasn’t good enough yet. He’ll soon take a test (intended for children whose first language isn’t German) the results of which will determine whether he’ll be graded this semester.

I find it interesting that there are very clear criteria for grades in all main subjects. The parents are told what those criteria are at the beginning of each school year; so if you’re up-to-date with your kid’s schoolwork (and you have to be, as you’re required to sign their notebooks regularly), then you can predict their grades.

I really like the morning reading ritual: between 07:45 and 08:00, when the school day starts, every child gets to read a book that they enjoy. Over a couple of months in second grade in Vienna, Illia read more than in his whole life in Ukraine. We even had to ask his grandma to send us more books from Ukraine – which costs stupid amounts of money – because we weren’t able to buy anything [in Ukrainian] here.

Illia was surprised that each class was made up of kids from two grades, for example second graders and third graders. They have some classes, like drawing, together and others apart, but they’re still considered one class.

In the coming months we’ll stick to family-based education in Ukraine. Parallel to attending the school in Vienna, Illia is taking classes in Ukrainian and maths, so that he can more easily adapt to his Ukrainian school again later on. This is very, very difficult, but he’s motivated because he misses his school a lot and dreams of going back.

The main advantages of the Austrian school are the experience of adapting to and learning to communicate in a new multicultural setting, learning a new language, and the experience of a new educational system.

It’s also curious that the local municipality sponsors school books, notebooks, and so on, so we thought there would be none of those much-maligned “class funds” that we had in Ukraine. But no, it’s all there. [she smiles]

We came to Warsaw on 28 February. I was totally lost for the first two weeks and didn’t want to enrol my daughter in a Polish school; it would mean admitting we were there for a while. But with time I realised that she has to be engaged, to have something to do, to have people to talk to.

I was working in a volunteer centre and asked the locals about how best to go about enrolling a child in a school. They gave me the contact details of a woman who was the coordinator for the district where we lived. When I called her she told me which one of the local schools had a place for a child of Eva’s age. That was the first and only school I looked at. We submitted all the relevant documents and were told Eva could start the next day.

There were already a few Ukrainian kids in Eva’s class because of the war; she made friends with them and initially mostly spoke Ukrainian. At the same time, she started learning Polish so she could talk to other kids as well. It was a relatively smooth and easy process: kids are so fast to learn languages, and everyone in Poland is very welcoming and good-spirited with refugee kids.

Education here is a lot less rigorous than in Ukraine. During the first three grades most learning takes place through play. When Eva was still in second grade last school year [in spring], she didn’t have any homework at all. In third grade she has some, mostly take-home tests. I’d say this is a rather rudimentary form of education, but everyone’s saying that things get more serious in fourth grade. In Ukraine she was solving maths problems and knew all of the multiplication tables, and here they’re still playing.

The coordinator I contacted helped me send my younger son Dania to kindergarten. He was four when we arrived and it was more difficult for him to adjust. He didn’t want to speak Polish. There were kids from Ukraine at his kindergarten but he didn’t make friends with them. He spent the first couple of weeks telling his teachers over and over: “I don’t understand, I’m from Ukraine.” But his teachers told me they noticed that Dania understood everything and could say things in Polish whenever he needed something. He was just refusing to, out of principle. In a few weeks, however, Dania started speaking, because he really wanted to play with other kids. And now he speaks Polish better than Eva.

Dania was transferred from kindergarten to “zerówka”, a group for preschoolers. He’s only five but his teachers said that he’s learning to read and write on par with all the other kids and that he knows Polish well; so he’ll be able to start school next year. Ukrainian kids arriving in Poland have a higher level of knowledge than kids of the same age from Poland, but having to learn a new language puts them at a similar level.

A few things are pretty curious. It’s turned out that Dania’s kindergarten has a music focus. Professional musicians give weekly concerts for the kids: violin, cello, guitar. Kids sit around listening to live music. They also have music and rhythm classes. The kids who are over three here don’t have an afternoon nap. They’re often given sandwiches for breakfast and as an afternoon snack, which is a bit unusual for us. But overall, the education system is quite similar to the one in Ukraine.

At school, swimming lessons are compulsory beginning in second grade. Kids are given swimming caps and goggles and taken to the pool once a week, at each and every school.

It’s very convenient that I can take my kids to school at 07:00 and not have to pick them up until 17:00 regardless of how many classes they had scheduled that day. There’s a room where they can draw, read, do homework, play and generally do whatever they want to. Sometimes lessons start at eight, sometimes at ten or at noon. But the kids can do their things at school while they wait for their classes. This is very convenient for the parents, who don’t have to adjust the schedule to their kids’.

Eva is continuing to study online at her school in Ukraine. She’s doing homework and sending it to her teachers there. She has one-on-one lessons with a teacher three times a week because most of her classes at the Polish school are in the morning and she can’t join the online classes in Ukraine then. Twice a week though, Eva joins the Ukrainian classes in the morning and then I take her to her Polish school. It’s very important for me that she continues with education in Ukraine, continues learning her native language, culture, and history.

Polish schools place a lot of emphasis on ethics, tolerance, and emotional intelligence. Kids are taught different values, how to behave in different situations and how to manage their emotions, how to have a sense of self-worth. They are taught how to deal with conflict in kindergarten. There’s also a religion class. It’s not compulsory: in the beginning of each school year parents are given a permission slip that they have to sign to allow their kids to take religion classes.

We have been in Berlin for the past seven months, since February 2022. My daughter Eva is eight, she finished second grade in Ukraine. This year she joined what’s called the “willkommen class” with other Ukrainian kids of her age.

It was relatively easy to get into a school. In Berlin, there are special district officials that allocate you to a school. When you register, you submit a letter to your district’s official and they send you an invite for a meeting with a school’s social worker who talks to you and your kid and tells you about the school. We received that invitation the day after we sent the letter. We even got several invites to visit different schools.

From the beginning, Eva really loved the school. She went to private school in Ukraine: everything was in English and the curriculum was very rigorous. The workload here is more gentle, there’s more opportunities to have fun. There’s only seven kids in her class, all of them Ukrainian, and after five months of Zoom classes, going to school here has become a real joy for her.

Eva speaks good English so she often translates for other kids. It’s also allowed her to make friends with other kids at her school; within a month, the entire primary school knew her. This year they don’t really have a strict curriculum, the main emphasis is placed on learning German so that in six months or a year she can join a regular German fourth grade.

Eva received lots of gifts when she first came to school: different stationery, lunch boxes, things like that. I think the teachers were also extremely attentive, and noticed the littlest things. For example, during our first school visit, the social worker gave Eva paper and coloured pens so she could draw while the worker spoke with me. When Eva was done, the woman asked her if Eva wanted to keep the drawing or leave it at the school. I noticed that Eva instantly opened up.

One of the drawbacks for me is that there are lots of different kids at the school; we didn’t experience this at our private school in Kyiv. For example, Eva told me about a classmate who swears a lot and who encouraged Eva to steal something from another girl. Of course I was shocked, but on the other hand, I took it as an opportunity to talk to Eva about moral values and rules.

Teachers here expect less from kids and let them have more fun. Kids are encouraged to run around during recess, to move; I think teachers also talk to kids more: they openly admire their talents, listen to the kids’ ideas. A few times Eva has told me that the teacher raised her voice, but immediately apologised afterward.

What I find unusual is that sometimes there are teachers’ strikes. You’re given an advance warning and there are no classes on those days. As a mom who works a lot and studies at a university, I find those days a bit stressful.