‘We have to get children back to school’: Education goes underground in Ukraine

When secondary school teacher Nataliia Gutaruk is out and about in the city of Zaporizhzhia, close to Ukraine’s frontline, teenagers she does not recognise sometimes greet her by name.

“I realise these are my students!” she says. “I have never seen their faces because they do not switch on their video cameras during online lessons.”

First the Covid pandemic, and then the war, have forced Ms Gutaruk to teach exclusively online for almost four years.

But she will soon give up teaching pupils remotely and meet them face-to-face in a real classroom again.

The only difference will be that this new school has no windows, is hardened against radiation, and lies six-and-a-half metres below the ground.

Since The Kremlin launched its full scale invasion in February 2022, some 365 Ukrainian education centres have been destroyed completely and more than 3,700 have suffered damage.

The threat the fighting poses to Ukrainian students and pupils led to Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) ruling that only schools with access to bomb shelters could deliver in-person education.

As of May 2024, about 58 per cent of schools nationwide met this standard. But concern about falling attainment levels and children’s personal development has prompted the ministry to take dramatic action by investing hundreds of millions of pounds to construct underground schools across eight frontline and border regions.

Security, safety and socialisation

In Zaporizhzhia, construction workers at a city centre have already dug out an enormous pit and poured concrete foundations for a new, bunker-like school facility to accommodate 460 students and 40 staff.

Ms Gutaruk’s Zaporizskiy Sichoviy Colegium and another local school will share the site.

Valentyna Yershova, the Colegium’s principal, told the Telegraph her students have been unable to attend school in person, because it lacks an adequate bomb shelter and currently houses people who have fled war-affected areas.

The new underground school will operate in two shifts each day, enabling nearly 1,000 pupils to attend class in-person, full-time.

“It will be equipped with modern facilities and technology to ensure children receive quality education,” says Ms Yershova, conceding that the works have fallen behind schedule but should be finished by November.

Ms Gutaruk has reservations about the building’s lack of natural light. But she believes the underground school will provide security, safety, and the opportunity for children to socialise in real life, “which is vital for developing communication skills and building relationships”. She also looks forward to lessons continuing even when air raid alarms sound.

On Sunday, aerial glide bombs struck several residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia injuring 14 people, with one landing 300m from the building site according to Gutaruk.

The project is one of five underground schools under construction in the Zaporizhzhia region, with a further five planned for a later stage. Building is also underway in the Dnipro and Kharkiv regions. The ministry is awaiting confirmation of future funding before it can confirm exactly how many giant shelters it can construct this year.

So far this year, the MoES has spent 2.35bn Ukrainian Hryvnia (£45m) repairing and constructing shelters for least 53 schools.

And in August, cabinet ministers approved a 5bn Hryvniais (£95m) grant to construct shelters in 77 additional educational institutions.

The MoES is also seeking an additional 14bn Hryvniais (£270m) to create shelters to house about 80,000 children in 165 schools, an investment it claims would allow 150,000 more children to access in-person education.

The ministry’s ultimate goal is to return 300,000 students to in-person learning by the end of this year as part of its ‘School Offline’ policy, deputy first minister Kudriavets Yevhen told the Telegraph.

“Remote education and constant stress because of the war has not only impacted the psychosocial state of our students, but also their level of knowledge,” he said.

The publication in 2023 of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a highly regarded metric of educational achievement, set alarm bells ringing among Ukraine’s educationalists. It showed that from 2018 to 2022, learning gaps among 15 year olds were equivalent to two years of loss in reading and one year in maths.

“We don’t have another option – we have to get children back to school as soon as possible,” says Mr Yevhen. The MoES has worked alongside the UN children’s agency, Unicef, to draw-up technical guidelines regional authorities can follow to build the underground facilities. They must have good ventilation systems and personal power supplies, to ensure electricity continues during planned or unplanned power outages.

Subway learning ‘100 per cent benefit’

The success of metro schools in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, has convinced the ministry that underground schooling is the best option among few available.

At just 18km from the Russian border, air raid sirens wail over Kharkiv every day, sometimes for hours on end. The city and the surrounding region has suffered numerous attacks by Russia’s drones and missiles.

More than 2,200 of the city’s grade 1 to 11 pupils (about four per cent) now attend classes in makeshift classrooms built inside six underground train stations, according to Kharkiv City Council. Pupils from 27 schools share the spaces, attending daily classes for four hours and completing the rest of the day online. Charity Save The Children UK has provided students with tablets, learning software and headphones.

Glass walls in one station’s large underground halls are all that separate teacher Svitlana Babenko’s class from metro passengers moving between platforms. The maths teacher from Lyceum 46 volunteered to teach in the metro as soon as it opened in October 2023. But it took time to get used to passers-by “giving us weird looks”. The constant background noise of trains arriving and departing can be distracting too, she adds.

However Ms Babenko believes the ministry is moving in the right direction by developing more opportunities for children to learn underground.

“Children are going to 100 per cent benefit from it,” she says.

Ms Babenko believes her pupils are currently receiving a better education, as well as the chance to socialise.

“There is a clear difference with in-person education,” she says. “Whenever I see my students I can see what they are doing, writing, I can react, interact and intervene at any time. That’s impossible online.”

One of her students, Eva*, 15, said her studies improved after joining the metro school. With a giggle, she admits to browsing the internet and being easily distracted when distance learning. She also missed her friends, but now sees them everyday.

“I don’t find a big difference between my school before the war, and the one underground,” she says. “It doesn’t bother me to be in the subway.”

Eva used to study in her flat, but feels safer underground.

“[During an air raid] if the explosions were loud I would go to the corridor,” she says. “If it wasn’t that loud, I would stay in my room.”

For now, most of the Ukrainian government’s efforts to preserve access to education are focussed on areas closest to the front lines.

But even in the western region of Lviv, where fewer Russian attacks occur, education is also moving underground.

Solomiya Boykovych runs four private pre-schools in the area. With investment from a parent, she is currently constructing her own purpose-built early education centre. Its unique selling point is a huge underground shelter-come-sports hall.

“It doesn’t matter how far you are from the Russian border,” she says.

Last year, her daughter’s primary school was damaged in a Russian missile strike.

On September 4, she and her family were lucky to survive an attack on the city that killed seven people, including three children.

“A few explosions happened 20m from my house,” she says. “It was the worst night of our lives.”

Parents of two-, three- and four-year-old children have been reluctant to send them to preschools with ill-equipped bomb shelters, says Ms Boykovych, who is the director of the Ptashenya Children’s Space Kindergarten.

But the new facility will have space for 150 children and features several underground rooms where young children can nap, play and eat – safe from any attacks that rain down on the city.

The structure will be properly ventilated and will also have its own power supply backed by solar panels to ensure heating and lighting remain during power cuts.

Ms Boykovych hopes these features will encourage families to stay in Ukraine over the winter after it opens next month.

“Families decide to move abroad when winter is coming, because of power outages,” she says.

Ms Boykovych has always dreamt of constructing a purpose-built preschool, though she never imagined it would be to war-time specifications.

Even so, she believes the giant bomb shelter is an investment for the future.

“Even when the war stops, it will always be unsafe because of Russia,” she said. “There will always be sirens and missiles launching – this is our new reality.”

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