Non-formal education - Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum

elationship between the political and educational changes in the Ukrainian society. A political crisis in
the country often determines the emphasis on education reform for all or most of the political forces in
the country.
But the opportunities that are available in Ukraine in all-European and wider global educational
process, increased mobility of pupils, students and teachers, the gradual change of the system of
administration of educational institutions and the education system as a whole, defines new challenges
for Ukraine, which the Ukrainian society needs first of all.
Prerequisites for non-formal education in Ukraine
Non-formal education as the segment of educational rights in Ukraine isn’t a new phenomenon, if
we take into account cultural and social traditions in the progress of society (from tutors to practicing
teachers). Modern social and economic situation requires the qualified and institutional acknowledgement
of knowledge and skills, receiving by a person and required by a labor market. This is the urgent problem
for young people without necessary work experience.
Modern social and economic situation in Ukraine isn’t characterized only with the world-spread
social and economic crisis. First of all, this is a change of the traditional lifestyle, including work and
interpersonal relations, state organizations and institutes, connected to the work of big enterprises
(factories and plants), etc. Modern social and economic dynamism and mobility demand entirely
different qualities of personality: not diligence, but creativeness, strongly marked leadership ability, the
skill to master new technologies in short time and so on.
The system of formal education is the sufficiently conservative phenomenon, requiring a long time
and a lot of efforts to be reformed. Long-term problems with enactment of a law about high education
in Ukraine can be the glaring example for it.
Non-formal education (NFE) as the mechanism and the instrument of educational system is
considerably dynamic, providing the invariance in education requirements of the society in general and
certain individuals particularly. NFE offers opportunities both to solve short-term tasks (for example,
the acquiring certain habits and competences) and support prospects of forming world-view personal
knowledge (for example, the development of leadership ability or legal education).
A new generation of teachers, tutors, coaches, well-informed about new teaching methods and
skilled in the new approaches to educational process, was formed for the last decade; they can lead
to the conflict with traditional methods. So the non-formal education becomes the optimal sphere for
providing needs both for those, who teach and those, who wish to study.
Legislation framework
The functioning of the modern Ukrainian educational system is regulated by the different normative
legal documents, such as: Constitution of Ukraine, the Law of Ukraine “On Education”, the Law of Ukraine
“On Secondary Education“, the Conception of Secondary Education in Ukraine, “Provision of Ministry
of education of Ukraine “On secondary comprehensive educational establishment”, “On Experimental
Educational Platform” etc. The main trends of content, methods and forms of modernization of training
and the main points of school and university management are defined in these acts. There are also
two valuable documents except the mentioned ones: State national program “Education. Ukraine of
the XXI century”, which was established by the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine № 896
from 3.10.1993 and National doctrine of educational development, established by the resolution of the
President of Ukraine from 17.04.2002.
The Ukrainian educational system includes (according to the 29th article of Law of Ukraine On Education):
preschool education, secondary education, extra-school education, vocational education, higher education,
ex-degree education, post-graduate course, institution of doctoral candidacy, self-education.
So we can make a conclusion that the conception of “self-education”, which could, more or less,
correlates with the meaning of non-formal and informal education, is defined and presented in the
Law. The Article № 49 of the same Law is read as follows: “With the aim to develop the citizens’ selfeducation
open and public universities, lecture centers, libraries, different centers, clubs, broadcast
educational programs etc. are created by the state structures, enterprises, institutions, organizations
and citizens.”
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