Chapter 5. Private supplementary tutoring in Ukraine

Employment status of teachers

Teachers in Ukraine are public employees, employed by the founder of the educational institution in which they teach (rayon or city, oblast or the MoES) in accordance with the Law on General Secondary Education (Annex 5.A1, ref. 1), the Law on Education (Annex 5.A1, ref. 2) and the Labour Code of Ukraine (Annex 5.A1, ref. 3).

The legislation stipulates a number of responsibilities that come with the profession and its employment status, all of which focused on fulfilling the professional obligations of teachers in school, for the most part during regular school hours, and their duty to meet their work obligations as employees according to the Labour Code. The regulations feature also some limited notions of ethics, but in declarative form only. For example, Article 56 of the Law on Education stipulates a duty to adhere to ethical standards and high morals, without further detail on what these standards are. At the time of this integrity review, Ukraine was recognised for its progress in developing conflict of interest regulations for the public sector. However, none of these regulations specifically covered public employees, such as teachers. A draft code of ethics for teachers was published by the MoES for a public discussion in 2011, but the document was not approved. In 2016 an Education Workers Code of Ethics was drafted by the Institute of Education Content Modernisation, but had not been adopted at the time the integrity review was completed.

Teaching workload

The workload of teachers is determined by two pieces of legislation: The Labour Code of Ukraine, which stipulates a reduced working week for teachers at all levels of education (36 hours instead of the standard 40 hours) (Annex 5.A1, ref. 4); and the Law on General Secondary Education, which determines that one standard workload (stavka) comprises 18 hours. The maximum standard workload of teachers may not exceed the maximum number of hours per week stipulated in the Labour Law: two stavka totalling 36 hours per week. Roughly half of these hours are spent teaching. Time spent outside of lessons is not regulated by law.

Many teachers are likely to have time to participate in tutoring. While there are no official statistics about the average number of working hours teachers have in Ukraine, the review team was told in stakeholder meetings that it is uncommon for teachers to have a 36-hour workload. For teaching-intensive subjects such as Ukrainian language, for which the school programme establishes a high number of hours per week, principals commonly split the available hours among several teachers, especially in bigger schools with more classes. For other subjects that have lower priority and less weekly hours, such as law or technical drawing, schools might require less than the 18 hours per week of one standard workload, especially in schools with less enrolment and fewer classes.

For teachers who teach less than the norm, these arrangements lead to the availability of time outside the classroom. While the job of a teacher normally requires preparation before and after class, work with colleagues and parents, and dealing with administrative tasks, this non-teaching time is not regulated, and may be used for different activities, including for private tutoring. In addition, the school year in Ukraine is relatively brief, containing 160-165 days of instruction, as compared to the OECD average of 184 days, providing additional time to support tutoring activities (UNESCO, 2011; OECD, 2016).

The framework of student assessments in Ukraine

As preceding chapters have described, there are three types of assessments of student knowledge in Ukraine that have consequences for the eligibility of students to progress to higher levels and different types of pre-tertiary education (e.g. academic, general secondary or vocational), and to higher education. These assessments are: (1) the continuing assessments by school teachers; (2) state final exams at the end of Year 4, 9 and 11 (developed and delivered by schools within guidelines set by the Ministry of Education); and (3) the External Independent Testing (EIT) at the end of Year 11, an externally developed and administered assessment.

The average results of the continuing assessments by school teachers in the years preceding the state final exams are decisive for progression to the next-highest level of education, except to Years 5 and 10, and for graduation. The successful transition at these points of the student career depends on the state final examination, which is the official “gateway” to gymnasiums (first-time enrolment in Year 5), and lyceums and collegiums (first-time enrolment in Year 10). The EIT is paramount for access to higher education institutions (HEI), and its scores can be combined with the results of the state attestation after Year 11 into a composite score for competitive admission to higher education. All are important for progression through the education system and for HEI access.

Continuing assessments, the state final exams and the EIT assessments share some important common traits.

First, they all evaluate the subject-matter knowledge covered in the school curriculum during regular school hours. This means that the content of tutoring in preparation for these assessments is aligned with the curriculum, which in turn raises the prospective “market” value of school teachers as private tutors (Borodchuk, 2011).

Second, state exams and the EIT cover a selection of core subjects within the curriculum. Teachers in specialties that are compulsory or widely examined are more likely to be sought after as tutors than others. As shown in Table 5.2, Ukrainian language and literature is a high priority, since it is obligatory in both the state final school-leaving exam and the higher education entrance examination, the EIT. Students are also required to examine in mathematics or history of Ukraine, as well as one foreign language. Examination in other school subjects depends upon the student’s choice of higher education programme.

Absence of regulations against conflict-of-interest forms of private tutoring

Countries commonly introduce provisions that regulate external professional engagements of civil servants and public employees to ensure that conflicts of interest do not arise. If these rules were applied to teachers, they would prohibit them from teaching their own students after school for a fee (Bray, 2009). In Ukraine, however, private tutoring is an unregulated domain. There are no laws against it or in its favour, no differentiation between permissible or undesired types of tutoring, and no limitations to the conditions under which teachers can provide this service and to whom. The rights and obligations of school teachers do not prohibit them from providing paid tutoring services to students from their class.

This situation is part of a broader challenge with the scope of conflict-of-interest regulations in Ukraine, which exclude certain categories of employees in the public sector. Whether employed as civil servants, public officials or public employees (as is the case in Ukraine), teachers in public education are entrusted with “public duties on behalf of the State” (OECD, 2005) and are expected by the public to perform them without taking undue advantage of their position.

A recent report from the third round of monitoring of Ukraine under the Istanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan, conducted in 2014 by the Anti-Corruption Network for Eastern Europe and Central Asia of the OECD, concluded that the definition and mechanism to resolve conflict of interest in Ukraine was greatly improved through adoption of the new legal framework for prevention of corruption (OECD, 2015). The report also acknowledged that an institutional mechanism for enforcement of conflict of interest rules was also put in place: according to the new Law on Prevention of Corruption (Article 11), the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption is responsible for monitoring and control over implementation of legislation on ethical behaviour, the prevention and settlement of conflicts of interest in the activities of persons authorised to perform the functions of the state or local self-government and persons equated to them.

Unfortunately, these positive legislative and institutional developments address potential conflict of interest issues only of persons holding administrative management positions in public educational establishments, and cannot be applied to other public employees, including regular teachers in Ukraine.

Parental mistrust in the adequacy of classroom teaching

Parents have no direct exposure to the teaching and learning process at school, and their main source of official feedback about the effectiveness of learning in class are the teachers – through the marks they give and through regular, collective meetings with parents (usually once a month). The absence of more differentiated and structured, formative feedback about student performance leaves room for teachers to control the messages to parents about the assessment results of their children and the underlying reasons of performance below expectations.

Private supplementary tutoring is motivated, in part, by parental doubts about the effectiveness of instruction provided during regular school hours. In a 2006 survey, some 60% of parents claimed that teachers did not provide enough knowledge to the students during regular class, making it necessary for them to pay for private tutoring (Hrynevych et al., 2006). Doubts about the quality of instruction continue. A 2015 survey indicated that 75% of parents considered the quality of education provided in public secondary schools to be of either low or medium quality (IED, 2015).

This parental attitude towards tutoring by school teachers was noted during the site visits for this review as well. Parents stated that the tutoring help of school teachers serves an enrichment purpose. They also said that it is needed to compensate for the limited effectiveness of learning in class – because of overpopulated classrooms, overburdened curriculum and the short attention span of their children.

Perceptions of testing and curriculum mismatch

Those who designed the EIT assessment believe it to be well-aligned to the school curriculum. However, parents and students with whom the review team met believe otherwise. They argued that the two are not well aligned, and that private tutoring is needed to prepare for the EIT. EIT takers in 2016 who received tutoring did not feel confident enough to take the test with their knowledge from school and without additional preparation in the form of private supplementary tutoring. Only a quarter of the approximately 750 graduates who took the EIT in 2016 with the help of a tutor and were surveyed on the day of their test felt confident that they would have managed successfully even without additional help. In the view of 45%, private tutoring was a must, and a further 30% were not certain how successful they would have been without tutoring (Civic Network Opora, 2016).

Professionals from several highly regarded HEIs and some teacher training institutes suggested to the review team there is a gap between the EIT and what is taught at school, but that it is not related to a mismatch in content. Rather, it stems from the format of the EIT, which is less familiar to students than other assessment formats. Indeed, it is the first (and last) time in the educational career of students when they experience an assessment in the format of a multiple-choice test, with consequences for their educational career.

That the one-off character of EIT-testing experience is a source of uncertainty was confirmed, in part, by the accounts of students noted during the site visits. Some suggested that much of the tutoring effort is invested in learning how to translate the broad knowledge in the school curriculum - from the diverse ways in which it was transmitted by teachers and in textbooks in the course of schooling - into the EIT “one-size-fits-all” multiple choice format.

Limited remedial assistance provided in school

Remedial teaching and other types of assistance that could reduce the need for private tutoring are absent from schools in Ukraine, or provided in inappropriate ways. Schools typically allocate one period per week per obligatory subject for remedial courses. In principle, students can come to ask questions about the lectures and obtain supplementary explanation of course materials. Parents noted that the question-and-answer format of these classes can intimidate children and make them reluctant to show their knowledge gaps, especially if the teacher-student communication is authoritarian or “dictatorial”. In special circumstances, typically when children have been sick, teachers can provide additional tuition of 20 to 30 minutes for extra help after the class. In case this is not enough, the usual practice is that the student is encouraged to seek private tutoring. Furthermore, the remedial classes are set in the school timetable but outside regular time when students may be too tired to attend and ask questions.

Financial incentives for teachers to undertake tutoring

When salaries are especially low, teachers often take on additional work – including private tutoring (UNESCO, 2015). In Ukraine, low teacher salaries can be an important source of incentives for education professionals to engage in additional income-generating activities, such as private supplementary tutoring. This is particularly true for teachers whose contracted workload is less than a full working week, who do not receive additional compensation for other (e.g. administrative) obligations in the school, and whose subject is in demand for private tutoring because it is part of the EIT.

To illustrate the strength of incentives for teachers to undertake private tutoring, Table 5.5 shows the potential monthly income of a mid-career teacher (professional category 1 or 15 years of experience) who teaches one standard workload, who receives only a statutory salary (without supplemental payments for extra work) and who tutors three students per month. It also compares teacher income to earnings of workers with a comparable level of qualifications. A category 1 statutory salary of UAH 2 334 without private tutoring is well below the average wage in the public sector, below the average household income and well below the income of tertiary education graduates employed in other sectors of the economy. Providing private tutoring to three students at the average rate of UAH 1 024, the monthly cost of tutoring reported by EIT participants in 2016 (Civic Network Opora, 2016), can boost teacher income to levels considerably closer to the average household income of professional, scientific and technical professions.

Closing the opportunities for malpractice

Eliminating the incentives for malpractice