The issue of whether there is a need to introduce compulsory enrolment of displaced Ukrainian children in Latvian schools sparked a wide debate among Latvian policy makers, educators, the Ukrainian community in Latvia and broader society in October 2024. When investigating current support practices applied at Latvian schools, this proposal for displaced Ukrainian children is ambiguous. In this blog, HROMADA member Oksana Žabko looks at the existing practices applied for the inclusion of Ukrainian children in Latvian schools and discusses their lived experiences.
As the war in Ukraine drags on, concerns about whether displaced Ukrainian children have access and opportunities to continue their education in a systematic way are increasing in Latvia. While in Lithuania and Estonia Ukrainian children were obliged to enrol in national schools since their arrival, in Latvia, they have been allowed to choose whether to enter local schools or not. According to the Ministry of Education and Science of Latvia, at the end of the previous school year (on 29.04.2024), 3,645 Ukrainian children (66% of the total estimated number) attended Latvian schools or kindergartens, but 1,842 (34%) children stood outside the Latvian education system. Although there is a widespread assumption that these children might be studying remotely in Ukrainian schools, various non-governmental organisations and field experts have expressed their concerns regarding the risks arising from such practices and call for a more proactive position in the provision of learning opportunities for Ukrainian children in Latvia.
To be or not to be?
In the summer of 2024, the Latvian government’s intention to make it compulsory for Ukrainian children to be enrolled in Latvian schools was not adopted by the Parliament. The issue was re-opened in October 2024, sparking a wide debate on the practices available to support Ukrainian schoolchildren and their Latvian language proficiency at the level needed to succeed in the curriculum, especially in mathematics or physics.
Since 2022 the Latvian government has allocated certain state budget funds to support the measures needed for the integration of Ukrainian children in Latvian schools. In a recent document published by the European Union Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, Latvia has been reported as a country providing a wide range of support measures for displaced Ukrainian children in the national education system. However, their effectiveness has not yet been evaluated, especially, from the point of view of the beneficiaries– displaced Ukrainian children in Latvia. Without pretending to be a comprehensive analysis of the situation in Latvian schools, this blog post examines existing support practices through the lived experience of Ukrainian children in Latvia based on communication with school principals and ethnographic observations of interactions between pupils and teachers during fieldwork conducted by the Baltic Institute of Social Sciences in Spring 2024 within the framework of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) . The survey team was allowed to visit 142 schools in Latvia observing interactions with displaced Ukrainian children present.
Class composition
Data from the Ministry of Education and Science show that displaced Ukrainian children attending Latvian schools are almost evenly distributed among the 1st to 9th grades, with an average of just over 200 children in each grade. However, when looking at individual schools, across all year groups, the most common enrolment rate is 1-5 displaced Ukrainian children per school (across 203 Latvian schools). This means that often, Ukrainian children find themselves in an unfamiliar Latvian school environment and their well-being depends significantly on the school’s management and teachers’ ability to support them both academically and emotionally. To continue with the statistics, 6–10 Ukrainian children were identified in 41 Latvian schools. In 62 other schools, there were more than 11 Ukrainian pupils, though typically no more than 70 within a single school. The exception, of course, is the Riga Ukrainian Secondary School, which has hosted more than 100 displaced Ukrainian children.
Latvian schools build up their expertise
Some other schools in Riga and elsewhere in Latvia (in larger cities like Daugavpils, Jelgava and Ventspils) are specialising in the integration of pupils with different migrant backgrounds, including refugee children, returnees and, from 2022, displaced Ukrainians. However, their practices vary depending on the number of pupils enrolled. In the case of Ukrainians, we see that a higher enrolment allows for the formation of separate classes of displaced children, albeit small in terms of pupil numbers. When we met these classes in Latvian schools, several positive practices were observed, such as opportunities to speak in their mother tongue and psycho-social support provided by teachers or teachering assistants fluent in Ukrainian.
However, according to the Ministry of Education and Science, only 34 displaced Ukrainian teachers work in Latvian schools. Larger municipalities consider this an insufficient number for provision of the necessary support to Ukrainian children attending their schools. Indeed, this figure is far too low to offer support to Ukrainian children attending schools with low numbers of Ukrainian pupils. Moreover, while we saw that Ukrainian children in these classes seemed feeling relaxed and joyful, we did not get clear evidence as to what extent they engage in wider school activities outside their safe classroom environment.
Focus on academic achievements over building friendships
Our visits to schools showed that school principals differ in terms of their degree of commitment in facilitating integration of displaced Ukrainian schoolchildren. Positive examples include the active and even personal involvement of school management in promoting the academic success of Ukrainian pupils. According to school principals, this includes intensified learning of Latvian outside school hours, while using Latvian during school hours, making sure that the Ukrainian pupil has understood what is being said or written. We saw that the use of translation tools (e.g. google translate, etc.) to clarify unknown words was tolerated and even encouraged in the class environment. Some schools lacking specific teaching assistants for displaced Ukrainian children encourage teachers of specific subjects to prepare translations of school tasks and materials, as well as inviting retired teachers of specific subjects (mathematics, physics, etc.) who are able to explain the curriculum in a mutually known intermediate language – Russian. As a result, we clearly see that the school principals measure the integration of Ukrainian pupils by their level of academic achievements within the Latvian education system and, in the case of 9th grade graduates, their ability to pass Latvian centralised exams and enrol at the next educational level (general secondary or vocational school). Alarmingly for us, conversations with school principals and teachers did not indicate that they saw the engagement of Ukrainian pupils in informal classroom activities or the establishment of new friendships as important elements for integration and well-being.
However, support for displaced Ukrainian pupils was not uniform across all Latvian schools. Some school principals and teachers believed that inclusion in education is largely the responsibility of Ukrainian pupils and their parents. Teachers argued that Latvian language learning opportunities were widely offered by their municipality outside the school environment, so the pupil had to manage both attending language courses and applying this knowledge at school. However, they found that their expectations were not being met – Ukrainian children lacking support were underperforming, with some staying in the same year group for a second year because of poor exam results. During the ESPAD survey, these pupils were present in the classroom but isolated from communication with their peers, and we as the organisers of the survey were the only persons who paid attention to whether the displaced Ukrainian pupil had understood the task and questions.
Overburdened with education?
It is generally acknowledged that a part of the displaced Ukrainian children living in Latvia study remotely in Ukrainian schools. As for those children who were present in Latvian schools, representatives of Latvian schools expressed their worries that those children had in fact a double workload, which in the long run could result in burnout. Parents’ choices were based on both the desire to ensure that their children could communicate in Ukrainian and to ensure that they learned Ukrainian history and literature, which are not taught in mainstream Latvian schools. When children felt overburdened with their education in the first schooling year in Latvia, some parents found an opportunity to transfer their children to the Riga Ukrainian Secondary School, providing curricula including Ukraine-specific subjects. However, this school cannot accept all displaced Ukrainian children, so for others, the problem should be tackled in a different way, for instance, by providing extra-class activities. In most cases, Latvian schools lack the necessary resources for extra-curricular activities – both in terms of curriculum and teachers. Therefore, cooperation between civil society organisations recently established by proactive displaced Ukrainians and local schools should be encouraged.
The Latvian government’s proposal has to come with more efficient support measures
In light of the lived experiences and statistics examined in this blog, the Latvian government’s proposal for displaced Ukrainian children to be compulsorily enrolled in Latvian schools is ambiguous. This decision has both potential positive outcomes and risks. In the case of younger children, their inclusion in Latvian schools will certainly bring positive results in the long term by strengthening their ability to follow the learning process and interact with other children, thus meeting their need for contact with their peers. In turn, pupils entering Latvian schools at grades 7 to 9 find it difficult to fit in. At this level, the Latvian-language curriculum is more challenging for any foreign-born pupil, with the result that children who would normally be average achievers are at risk of underachievement. Moreover, lack of psychological support can exacerbate the problem.
The examination of current support practices in Latvian schools necessitates further discussion of whether the Latvian government’s decision should be adjusted, perhaps by attributing the compulsory entry requirement to displaced Ukrainian children at the age of grades 1 to 6. Then, in the teaching process, it is highly advisable to foster interaction and cooperation between pupils to promote the involvement of Ukrainian children in various activities. Ukrainian parents’ desire for their children to learn Ukrainian could also be considered as part of extracurricular activities. As this new regulation is currently before the Parliament, there is a room for adjustments.
For further reading: European Commission: Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, The inclusion of displaced children from Ukraine in EU education systems – 2023-2024, Publications Office of the European Union, 2024, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2766/881892
