Jurgita Šiugždinienė: Ukraine has entrusted us with its future – its children – and the least we can do is to take good care of them

This year, EUR 38 million will be allocated for the education of Ukrainians who have come to Lithuania.

The Government has decided to allocate EUR 38 million to the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport to finance the education needs of Ukrainians who have come to Lithuania because of the war. This amount is available until the end of this school year. The funds will be distributed among pre-school and general education institutions, as well as higher education institutions.

The largest share of the funds, over EUR 31 million, has been earmarked for the education of children under the pre-school, pre-primary and general curricula in state, municipal and private schools, as well as for their transport to and from school. This amount also includes additional funds (EUR 473 200) to increase the salary of pre-school and pre-primary teachers by an average of 10% due to the complexity of their work with children from Ukraine. Until now, only general education teachers have been eligible for these additional funds.

EUR 3 million has been earmarked for the grants for students from Ukraine studying in our country’s state higher education institutions.

EUR 890 000 has been earmarked for the partial reimbursement of tuition fees for Ukrainians admitted to first cycle and integrated study programmes in state higher education institutions.

EUR 174 000 has been allocated to support second cycle students in Lithuanian higher education institutions.

In anticipation of the possible increase in the number of war refugees from Ukraine, an additional amount of EUR 2.9 million has been earmarked for the education of children arriving in Lithuania during the school year and starting to attend Lithuanian educational institutions.

“Ukraine has entrusted us with its most important asset – its children. And we will take good care of them. Unfortunately, the terrible war is not over yet and helping Ukrainians is very high on our daily agenda. We will support Ukraine until victory. We therefore must ensure that Ukrainian children, pupils and students feel safe in our educational institutions, find peer support, integrate, learn and plan their future. I thank all our educational institutions that are very kindly welcoming the war refugees,” says Jurgita Šiugždinienė, Minister of Education, Science and Sport.

So far, in 2022, Lithuania has already allocated almost EUR 28 million for the education of the arriving Ukrainians, including studies in higher education institutions and support for researchers.

In 2022, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport also allocated more than EUR 81 000 to part-finance the costs incurred by national sports federations and organisations to support Ukrainian high-performance athletes and coaches in Lithuania.