Ukrainian Trade Schools Struggle to Adapt

As Ukraine's economy picks up and demand for workers grows, the problems include substandard curricula and a lack of teachers

by Oksana Forostyna

Once the backbone of the Ukrainian educational system, trade schools turned out steelworkers, cooks, mechanics, welders, and bus conductors to fill waiting jobs in the centralized economy. In the Soviet period, a skilled factory worker could earn more than a university-trained engineer.

When the USSR's collapse sent the economy into free fall, the reliable, cold-tempered link between schools, industry, and the huge Soviet market snapped. Vocational schools lost so much prestige that in the early 1990s primary-school teachers started threatening slow pupils with, "Study hard or else you'll end up in trade school!"

But as a result, skilled workers drifted into other jobs or joblessness, especially in the less industrialized west of the country. The shortfall continues to this day, and the shortage of old hands to teach their skills in the shrinking number of trade schools is even more critical. Foreign and homegrown companies in some cases are stepping in to fill the gap, but there is a danger that foreign investors who view the country as a source of comparatively cheap workers will ignore its potential for high-value industrial and technical products and services.

THE FALL AND RISE OF THE WEST
After several years of promising results, Ukraine's economy has pulled itself out of the abyss. Employers are looking to hire construction workers, welders, metal workers, and mechanics, but blue-collar workers are hard to find, especially in the western regions that saw many workers leave for seasonal or permanent jobs in Central and Western Europe and Russia.

"Skilled craftsmen like these need to practice all the time," says Pavlo Khobzey, head of the education and science department for the Lviv regional administration. "Many could not keep up their skills during the period of economic stagnation. That's why we don't have any welders of the highest qualification in our trade schools. There are professionals in the regions, but they are very welcome in industry and will never agree to teach for the money we can give them."

In Soviet times vocational education and industry were linked in a human production line. Factories supplied schools with instruments, tools, and most important of all, skilled masters to teach those who would eventually take their places. Factories also paid these masters teaching salaries. When manufacturing crumpled at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, many trade schools lost this essential support. The share of all pupils attending trade and other vocational schools fell from 30 percent in the Soviet period to 13 percent today.

Khobzey outlines the three biggest problems facing vocational education in western Ukraine: lack of teachers and masters, curriculums lagging behind European standards, and poor conditions at schools. "Schools just can't buy modern equipment," he says.

But foreign companies can. Two firms going this route are two German construction industry leaders, Henkel and Knauf.

"They simply provided trade school students with their materials and technologies," says Myroslav Soroka, Khobzey's deputy for vocational education.

The companies donated paints, stucco, and other products to Lviv construction students.

"Students can not only get training, they can also renovate classrooms. It was clever of Henkel and Knauf: these students will certainly choose such materials after getting jobs in the construction industry," Soroka says.

Some trade schools are doing well without outside help. Soroka proudly describes the Higher Professional School for Restaurant Business and Tourism in Lviv and its "virtual training" model where students develop business plans, hire employees, and run a computer-generated company. "Students get all the modern skills necessary for their jobs," he says. "The level of this school impresses our partners from abroad."

Soroka admits this case is not typical: unlike other trades, cooks, confectioners, waiters, and bartenders are now welcomed on the regional labor market.

"The market demands professionals in services and tourism, and this is also the state strategy for the region: Lviv and the area as a draw for tourism and recreation,"