The Presidential Secretariat is to request from United Nations News Center the information on UN`s calculations according to which 300 thousands of Ukrainian children of preschool and school age have no access to education, according to the President`s press-office.
According to Oleksandr Bystrushkin, the head of the service for humanitarian policy and national cultural heritage at Presidential Secretariat Ukrainian side is astonished by the thesis that Ukraine, Russia and Turkey show highest indices of school age children that don’t have access to education. “Each of these countries numbers more than 300 thousands of such children. According to our data we don’t have these numbers”, - O. Bystrushkin said referring to UNESCO report dedicated to education situation in the world.
O. Bystrushkin also presented Presidential Secretariat’s data as well as Ministry’s of Education and State Statistics Committee’s. According to that data as for September 1, 2006 there were 46,359 children between 6 and 18 who were not visiting secondary education facilities. 11,925 could not visit schools because of health problems, another 13,999 - for other reasons.
“We shall address United Nations News Center with a request for their information sources and for calculation system. Our State’s prestige is at stake. Our professional task should they discover such children, to make efforts to resolve that issue”, - said O. Bystrushkin.
There are currently 5,433,485 children of 6 to 18 years age in Ukraine. 98,9% of them (5,373,557) are visiting secondary schools.
