Important decision
In the second half of December, the Constitutional Court struck down some provisions of the so-called Lex Ukraine of Education, which allowed schools to announce special registration dates for children with temporary protection in the first grade and at the same time exclude them from regular registration. According to the court, this was a differential treatment in the sensitive area of compulsory education that was not constitutionally justified and could promote segregation.
TheConstitutional Court ruled in plenary session and repealed the contested provisions on the day of the announcement of the ruling. At the heart of the dispute was the construction that the school director, in agreement with the founder, could establish “special” enrolment exclusively for foreigners with temporary protection, who then had no access to regular enrolment under the Education Act.
The court based the case on the right to education (“to everyone”), the principle of equality and the prohibition of discrimination. It assessed that the children in question were a comparable group to other future first-graders and that the criterion of temporary protection was closely linked to nationality in the context (in practice, it mainly affected Ukrainian children). It therefore applied a strict proportionality test and concluded that the regulation treated children with temporary protection differently and to their detriment.
The practical finding of the Constitutional Court is also key: the measure was not capable of achieving its stated objective, i.e. a more even distribution of Ukrainian children among schools. On the contrary, it could have led to the fact that the capacity of schools would be filled during the regular enrolment and there would be no room for children with temporary protection in the “special” term – which in effect increases the concentration of these children in fewer schools and reinforces the risk of segregation.
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