A flurry of excited voices share their weekend stories as students file into the classroom, scraping chairs against the floor and removing their rucksacks. Another week of school begins in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
But this isn’t an ordinary classroom. It’s on the frontline of the biggest conflict in Europe since the Second World War, built seven metres underground to protect students, teachers and staff from bullets, radiation and bombs.
Home to 1,000 students, the school’s construction is a lifeline for local children, allowing them to continue with some semblance of normality amongst the constant bombardment that has defined everyday life in this part of Ukraine for the last three years.
It is also an anomaly, presenting an exceptionally rare opportunity for Ukrainian children to learn inside a classroom – something that remains impossible for millions.
Schools and kindergarten closures are still impacting 2 million children across Ukraine, with millions more facing significant barriers to their learning. Tens of thousands of children who started their education within the last three years have never been inside a classroom.
Being able to go to school is one of the first things a child loses when war forces its way into their lives.
It destroys their homes and communities, forces their peers and teachers to flee, and any school buildings that remain standing are often repurposed as emergency shelters for families who have nowhere else to go.
Fighting and bombing has severely damaged nearly 4,000 educational facilities in Ukraine, while 365 have been completely destroyed. Meanwhile, school enrolment among children who have been forced to flee to neighbouring countries remains critically low: only 10 per cent of child refugees in Romania are attending school in-person, and this figure drops to four per cent for Ukrainian refugee children in Moldova.
While many young people are receiving some form of education online, such protracted time away from a physical classroom is catastrophic for children’s learning, social development and mental health.
We remember so vividly the impact of a disrupted year of not being able to send our children to school during the Covid-19 lockdowns. But hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children are now facing their fourth year without being inside a classroom. An entire generation of young people who have had their education disrupted by the pandemic and this war barely know what it’s like to go to school.
This is why Plan International and local partner organisations are focussing humanitarian efforts on repairing schools and getting children back into the classroom.
Critically, school does not just provide a child with a future; our work has consistently shown that regularly being in a safe, secure classroom is essential for helping children deal with the devastating mental impacts of war.
Tetiana, 35, is a teacher in Kharkiv. Having completed a special training programme that focuses on emotional support techniques for children, Tetiana now uses her classroom as a safe space for children to explore and understand their experiences of war.
At school, she works with children to help them express their feelings through activities such as drawings, colouring-in and group discussions. Through her approach, children have begun to process the loss of loved ones and the destruction of their homes.
She has been particularly struck by how many children have been able to use her classes to come to terms with leaving behind their beloved family pets.
But most children aren’t able to attend classes like Tetiana’s. Instead, they’re forced to come to terms with their trauma alone, without the support of their teachers, friends or peers. This is creating a mental health catastrophe among Ukrainian children.
As the fighting rages on, rebuilding efforts must therefore prioritise repairing educational facilities so that children can begin to return to school: not just so that they can learn but also so they can access critical support to help them process their pain.
As this conflict drags into its fourth year, the futures of children in Ukraine hang in the balance. The international community must do all it can to ensure that every child and young person impacted by this war can learn inside a classroom. Ukraine’s children deserve to go to school.
Sven Coppens is Director of global children’s charity Plan International’s humanitarian crisis response in Ukraine, Poland, Romania and Moldova