MANAGEMENT EDUCATION NETWORKS IN THE CONDITIONS OF DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The reform of education in Ukraine has been found to be consistent with the reform of decentralization. It is determined that in the process of decentralization reform, communities have an important strategic task – creating education management. It has been stated that the transfer of financial authority to the local level can help Ukraine to move away from the previous system of planning and implementation of educational policy by reducing the gap between operational and financial management, and the involvement of local authorities and schools in the decision-making process should improve the allocation of budgetary resources. In turn, this should lead to increased access to quality education, especially in more remote areas of Ukraine. It is emphasized that in the context of decentralization, the decision to open and close schools is taken by the communities based on their capabilities and needs, and no one except the village, town or city mayor and his assistants knows where the school should be, where the kindergarten should be, which school provides quality knowledge and which does not have sufficient resources to provide quality educational services and no official from the regional state administration or the Ministry of Education has a better situation than them. Accordingly, the optimization of the school network is only partly an initiative of the central government – every community can refuse to close even the smallest schools if it can and wants to finance them. The financial aspect of decentralization of the education system in Ukraine is fundamental, because not all communities are currently capable. The main objective of the CTA is to reduce the costs of maintaining educational institutions along with improving the quality of educational services. For this purpose in Ukraine the process of creation of reference schools is actively proceeding. The article examines successful examples of management of educational networks of creation in some newly created RTGs of Zaporizhzhya region, namely Priazovskaya, Girsivska and Orikhovska. Supportive schools have already been established and are operating successfully in each of these integrated territorial communities. These steps have significantly reduced the cost of maintaining educational institutions. All educators who wanted to continue their work were employed in reforming.