There is no Ukrainian class in the Ukrainian medium School no 20 in Feodosia as the schoolchildren and their parents have reported to the Crimean Human Rights Group. The school charter published at the educational establishment website says that there are two language media at school – Russian and Ukrainian. However, the information board at the school entrance is only in Russian.
You may find the Ukrainian school website on the Internet though the announcement published there informs that this website was closed in January 2016. The announcement refers to the new school website version but it is down.
It should be noted that the ‘Ministry for Education of Crimea’ places the information about this school on its website in the section ‘On status of education in state languages (Crimean Tatar, Ukrainian) and studying native languages in the educational establishments of the Republic of Crimea’.
This is not the only case when the information published at the ‘Ministry for Education of Crimea’ website contradicts the actual situation with the education in native languages.
According to the CHRG information, the only Ukrainian class at the K.A.Trenev High School No 11 (city of Simferopol) was closed in 2016. Now the Ukrainian language is studied in this educational establishment as option. However, this high school is still included into the list of seven Crimean schools offering the Ukrainian medium studies in the 2017 / 2018 academic year.
The CHRG has also received the information that at the Zuyska secondary school no 2 of Belogorsk District of Crimea the children study in Russian, though the ‘Ministry for Education’ website presents this school as a Crimean Tatar medium one.
These facts testify once more that Russia keeps on violating the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in Crimea. The Russian authorities apply the discriminatory practices regarding the right of Crimean citizens to study and to be trained professionally because only those who study in Russian may exercise this right in full. Moreover, the facts documented by the CHRG show that the authorities de facto disseminate a falsified information on the situation with the native language medium education.
The Crimean Human Rights Group is addressing the peninsula residents with a request to inform about closing the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar medium schools and classes. The full list of classes and schools reported to offer the native language medium studies in Crimea is available at link.
The information on such class closure as well as refusal of the educational establishment administrations to create new native language medium classes may be emailed to [email protected] or sent to personal messages at Facebook CHRG page.
We would remind that according to the CHRG monitoring data, the number of Ukrainian medium classes in Crimea reduced 31 times from April 2014 to early 2017.
