Scandal with teacher bonuses: why teachers in Odesa region did not receive money
4 November 19:53
In Odesa region, teachers have not received the government-guaranteed additional payment of UAH 2,600. On November 4, the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy, Danylo Hetmantsev, wrote about this on his Facebook page, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
The parliamentarian wrote the following:
“I received an appeal from teachers from Odesa region. They say that since September, the promised monthly supplement of UAH 2600, provided for by a government decree, has not been received. Or it was paid selectively without any explanation.
Mr. Hetmantsev added that he has already asked the Prosecutor General to verify these facts and assess the actions of officials who allowed non-payment or reduction of the supplement.
If the abuses are confirmed, the perpetrators should be brought to justice,” the MP summarized.
Additional payment for teachers in 2025: details
The government’s 2025 supplemental payment to school teachers is envisaged by a Cabinet of Ministers resolution.
From January 1, 2025, the government established a fixed monthly allowance for teachers of UAH 1300 (gross), and from September 1, 2025, it was increased to UAH 2600 gross.
Teachers will be paid until the end of martial law and until the end of the calendar year in which it is canceled or terminated. A separate increase is envisaged for frontline communities: up to approximately UAH 5200 gross per rate (approximately UAH 4000 per person), which should partially compensate for the increased risks and burden.
All teaching staff of state and municipal general secondary education institutions are entitled to the supplement. The allowance is calculated automatically, without any applications from teachers, and is paid in proportion to the actual teaching load and working conditions (full or part-time, part-time, etc.). Funding is provided at the expense of the educational subvention allocated to communities. Thus, the technical implementation of payments is carried out at the level of local financial authorities and accounting departments of educational institutions.
Read also: All for defense, the rest – as it happens: what will the budget for 2026 really be like?
What to do if a teacher has not received a payment
Lawyers explain that possible delays or selective charges are not due to a lack of legal grounds, but to organizational failures on the ground: late subvention, calculation errors, technical pauses in workload accounting.
In such cases, the first step is to check the payslip and find out the status of the accrual in the institution’s accounting department. If the issue is not resolved, the next step is to send a written appeal to the local community education department and the school founder with reference to the relevant Cabinet of Ministers resolutions. In the event of further delays or refusals, it is advisable to initiate an appeal to the Ministry of Education and Science and the Government Contact Center, attaching copies of previous correspondence and specifying the periods for which payment has not been made.
Salary issue in Ukrainian education: what you need to know
Back in February 2025, Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi said on camera that at least UAH 270 billion was needed to simultaneously raise salaries for all categories of teachers – preschool, general education, vocational education, and higher education. And now the ministry “cannot find the source of these funds.”
At the same time, almost simultaneously with this statement, he reported to the parliament on his two years as head of the ministry and said that teachers’ salaries had been raised by 15%. However, there was a nuance.
In real life, teachers’ salaries turned out to be 2000 hryvnias lower than planned. Even with the introduction of the so-called “teacher’s thousand,” many educators received lower payments in 2025 than in 2024 due to a reduction in bonuses for the prestige of their work.
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And more recently, on October 29, Lisovyi again faced criticism from Ukrainians over payments to teachers.
The minister announced that the Cabinet of Ministers had updated Resolution No. 800, introducing a unified state platform for the professional development of teachers. It will collect accredited providers, programs, certificates, and licenses, and supervision will be officially counted as part of professional development.
Under Lisovyi’s Facebook post, hundreds of educators left critical comments, accusing him of imitating reforms and “money passing teachers by.”
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