Schemes on textbooks: a new publishing house received UAH 180 million from the Ministry of Education
6 August 2024 11:29
The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, through the state institution Institute for Modernisation of Education Content, has signed agreements worth almost UAH 180 million with the newly established Atlant Publishing House for the printing of school textbooks. The publishing house, founded less than a year ago, has received more than 100 orders in a short time. This is stated in an investigation by NGL media, according to "Komersant Ukrainian"
“Atlant specialises in publishing textbooks for schools with minority languages of instruction (Polish, Hungarian, Romanian) and for students with special educational needs. Most of the agreements (83) were concluded in June-July 2024 for a total amount of UAH 163 million without tenders.
The investigation found that the cost of printing services in Atlant’s estimates could be overstated by 2-5 times. For example, for the textbook “Health, Safety and Welfare” for sixth-graders with special educational needs, the cost of printing is UAH 455 per copy, while the real market price may be around UAH 109.
The founders of Atlant are the owners of the three largest educational publishing houses in Ukraine – Viktor Kruglov (Ranok), Oleh Furman (Genesis) and Oleh Kostenko (Orion). In recent years, these publishers have received more than half of all state funds for the publication of school textbooks.
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All Atlant textbooks are printed in the Kharkiv printing house PET LLC, owned by Israeli citizen Mikhail Shifrin. This printing house has been known since the time of Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk (2010-2014) for its non-transparent schemes of working with publishers.
Yevhen Bazhenkov, director of the Institute for the Modernisation of Education Content, says that the institution does not influence the choice of a printing house by publishers. Instead, the director of Atlant, Lelya Minakova, refused to comment on the information about the overpricing.
The Ministry of Education of Ukraine has responded to the situation. It said it was initiating an internal investigation. However, it will only concern the purchase of textbooks at an inflated price. That is, the ministry will not consider the question of why the Institute for Modernisation of Education Content orders textbooks from only one publishing house, which was established less than a year ago.
In addition, the Ministry stated that the Institute is “a separate legal entity engaged in organising a tender and purchasing textbooks and manuals for schools”, meaning that the Ministry of Education is not directly involved. However, since they adhere to anti-corruption principles, they will check the work of the Institute and will definitely inform the public about the results of the inspection.
