This blog was originally published by UNICEF.

UNICEF and its partners are conducting face-to-face lessons for primary school students in Ukraine to help them catch up on what they have missed due to the ongoing war.

Ten-year-old Polina from Zaporizhzhia has already attended three of the classes. In September, she will enter the fifth grade, so catching up on math, English and Ukrainian with her peers every week is invaluable.

There are 10 to 15 children in every class. Each lesson lasts up to two hours.

“I am very pleased that the teachers pay a lot of attention to math in the classroom,” says Olena, Polina's mother. “Before the last school year, I took Polina to a tutor to catch up on this subject, but now there is no need for that. The teachers explain everything in an accessible and interesting way.”

Olena says that math and the Ukrainian language are their top priorities, since these are the mandatory subjects for the External Independent Evaluation, which Polina and her classmates will need to take to enter a university.

“They also need to return to the classroom for socialization, communication and meeting new friends,” says Olena.

The impact of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine only compounds years of lost learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since February 2022, more than 3,500 educational institutions in Ukraine have been damaged or destroyed.

As of May 2023, only one-third of schools across the country were able to provide full-time education for children, in part due to a lack of safe shelters in educational buildings. As a result, children have suffered significant losses in their education.

UNICEF, together with partners from the Ukrainian Educational Platform Foundation, is conducting catch-up classes for 3,000 primary school students in the Zaporizka, Khersonska, Kharkivska and Dnipropetrovska regions, including the areas most affected by the hostilities.

The program is being implemented with the support of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) to fill gaps in reading, writing and arithmetic skills, as well as to provide children with psychosocial support.

In the 2023/2024 school year, UNICEF plans to organize catch-up classes for more than 300,000 children.