BACK TO SCHOOL, BACK UNDERGROUND ⟩ A Third-Grade Ukrainian Boy's Only Known Educational Reality in the Shadow of War

Before the full-scale war, Kharkiv was home to nearly two million people. Now, approximately 1.3 million residents remain. Among them are 53,000 school-age children, with another 50,000 living elsewhere but continuing to study remotely in Kharkiv schools.

Most children will continue with online learning as the war drags into a third school year. Only 5,000 students—about ten percent of the schoolchildren in Kharkiv—will have the opportunity to attend classes in a hybrid format, part-time online and part-time in underground schools, all of which operate in two shifts.

"The school experience will never return to what it was before the war, because we have a cruel, deceitful, and ruthless neighbor," remarked Olga Demenko, head of Kharkiv's Department of Education. "Our children will never again be completely safe."

Kharkiv has established metro schools, with six metro stations adapted for classes, all located at least ten meters underground. The classrooms are set up in former offices or on balconies in the station vestibules. Approximately 3,500 children attend these metro schools every other day, and the city plans to expand this network. On weekends, preschool classes are held in the metro for five-year-olds.

Another option is certified shelters, though currently, only two schools in Kharkiv are equipped with these. More are set to open soon. Soviet-era schools often designated basements as shelters, but these spaces are inadequate against modern threats such as missile strikes and aerial bombs. Upgrading them to meet today’s safety standards is prohibitively expensive.

The third type of school is one built underground from the outset. Kharkiv is preparing to open its first such school, designed for 900 children in a district near a local tractor factory. Three more are under construction in different parts of the city. Additionally, six underground schools are being built in the Kharkiv region, with funding already secured for 14 more. Construction on these will begin shortly.

We visited Kharkiv’s first specialized underground school. Here, classes will take place six meters below ground. The classrooms resemble those in any typical school, with the notable absence of windows.

In total, the underground school houses 20 classrooms. Three of these have movable walls that can be combined to form a large assembly hall, used, for instance, for the start of the school year next Monday. The building is equipped with a powerful ventilation system capable of both heating and cooling the air. "This facility was constructed with every conceivable threat in mind," Demenko assured.

The most significant difference between this and an above-ground school, aside from the absence of windows and natural light, is the length of the school day. Underground, students will have only three to four hours of classes daily. According to Demenko, the reason is simple: children can't move around as much underground, and longer school days would negatively impact their physical activity. Moreover, all underground schools operate in two shifts to accommodate as many students as possible.

In Kharkiv, it is primarily younger students who can attend school in person. Older students will continue with online learning, as they have for the past five years. Before the war, these students already spent two years studying online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Demenko explained that younger students were prioritized to help them develop social skills. "It’s crucial for young children to learn to interact with their peers. This interaction fosters their talents, leadership qualities, and coping skills," she said.

The cost of constructing the first specialized underground school was 58 million hryvnias (approximately 1.25 million euros). Including furnishings and necessary equipment, the total cost rose to 70–75 million hryvnias (around 1.5–1.6 million euros), according to Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Several international aid organizations, such as USAID, contributed to equipping the classrooms.

The need for more such schools is urgent, but the lack of state funding is a significant obstacle, Terekhov noted. The first school was financed by the city’s budget. Terekhov’s goal is for all Kharkiv children to attend underground schools, but he acknowledges that reaching this goal will take years.

The city of Zaporizhzhia, also near the front lines, has already begun to follow Kharkiv’s example, using its designs to build underground schools. However, like Kharkiv, they receive no state funding for these projects. The state simply lacks the financial resources.