At the end of June, Ukraine’s ministry of education and science got a new boss – Serhiy Shkarlet, rector of Chernihiv Technological University. Shkaret’s appointment was met with public controversy and protests. A former member of the Party of Regions, which was pushed out of power in Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution, Shkarlet has not hidden his sympathy for former president Viktor Yanukovych in previous press interviews. The day after Shkarlet’s candidacy was announced, activists found signs of plagiarism in his academic papers - an accusation he denies.
Shkarlet has now been appointed acting education minister, after the parliamentary committee on education chose not to support his candidacy. This appointment was also publicly opposed by ex-education minister Hanna Novosad, who claims that Ukraine could now expect an attack against post-Maidan reforms in education and science, and a return to the rhetoric of Yanukovych-era education minister Dmytro Tabachnik.
Hanna Novosad began working at the ministry of education in 2017 as head of its directorate of strategic planning and euro-integration, and became ninister of education and science in August 2019. She held this post for six months, until the resignation of PM Oleksiy Goncharuk in March 2020.
