the Hungarian public media traveled to Western Ukraine a region still heavily populated with ethnic Hungarians to assess the grim realities of everyday life in a war-torn country While there has been no armed fighting taking place in this specific region the war’s effects have nevertheless been far-reaching the city of Ungvár (Uzhhorod) used to have a prominent ethnic Hungarian presence But since the Russian invasion many Ukrainians have moved to the Western part of the country away from the armed conflict and the proportion of the ethnically Hungarian population has thus been reduced with graffiti and posters calling for an end to the war on display across the city’ so much so that by now many businesses have acquired remote generators to power through these outages with graffiti and posters calling for an end to the war on display across the city while also criticizing the Zelenskyy administration A háború árnyékában élő Kárpátaljára látogatott a hirado.hu és az M1 Jó világ stábja a menekültek és a háborús sebesültek mindennapjaiba #hiradohu A legfrissebb és legfontosabb hírekért kövess minket weboldalunkon és a közösségi médiában: Weboldal: https://www.hirado.hu Facebook: https://www.fb.com/hirado.hu Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hiradoponthu/?hl=hu Tiktok: https://tiktok.com/hirado.hu the film crew travelled to Szolyva (Svalyava) to meet the orthopedic doctor in charge of a factory producing prosthetic legs for the soldiers who have lost a limb in the war—one of the reminders of those grim realities of wartime The factory is being funded by humanitarian aid from the United States The Hungarian public media has also talked to some of the amputee soldiers coming out of the Eastern frontlines have shown incredible persistence and strength and speaking of a positive view of the future even after their lives have changed forever,’ the reporter who reveals herself to be a native of Transcaprathia herself the film crew visited the Military Cemetery at Calvary Park hundreds of local men lie who have lost their lives during the war at a premature age Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective Approximately five hundred new jobs will be created in Svalyava (Zakarpattia region) due to the establishment of an industrial park in the city The decision to include the "Energy Group" park in the Register of industrial parks was made by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine during a meeting on June 28 "The implementation of the 'Made in Ukraine' economic policy is yielding results More and more Ukrainian manufacturers are joining programs that are part of this policy the creation of the 'Energy Group' industrial park was initiated directly by the business sector the country will have new production facilities around 500 local residents will gain employment and both the state and local budgets will receive additional revenues," noted Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine Vitaliy Kindratiuk According to the concept of the industrial park a factory will be constructed to manufacture metal-plastic windows and doors Production is expected to commence by December 2024 the managing company and participating investors will collectively invest 876.5 million UAH including contributions from foreign companies Ukraine now hosts a total of 82 industrial parks The development program for industrial parks is part of the Made in Ukraine economic policy aimed at stimulating the development of domestic production with high added value The state budget for 2024 allocates 1 billion UAH for the implementation of the industrial park development program These funds will be used for co-financing the development or construction of engineering and transportation infrastructure as well as for partially reimbursing the costs of connecting to electrical networks Applications for the program will be accepted until August 15 Geological Survey (USGS) designed and implemented an effort to bring these capabilities to two towns in the Trans-Carpathian region of western Ukraine or "Zakarpattia," is a mountainous area that drains into the Tisa River basin This region experienced severe flooding in 1998 and again in 2001 due to a combination of heavy rains and rapidly melting snow Agency for International Development (USAID) during the past three years USGS has installed several flood-warning stream gauges in this area USGS also provided complete GIS systems and arranged for Esri training for municipal staff in the towns of Chop and Svalyava The project was implemented jointly with the Ukrainian Land and Resource Management Center (ULRMC) in Kyiv and Altarum Institute nonprofit research organization in Michigan The goal was to demonstrate to local governments how modern geospatial technology could help mitigate the risk of future flooding and allow them to perform various administrative tasks more accurately and efficiently The GIS provided to each town consisted of a high-end desktop computer Esri was chosen as the preferred GIS software provider for several reasons there is a substantial user base already present in Ukraine that uses Esri products for high-end GIS tasks; this facilitates data sharing among government entities there is in-country product support through ECOMM possessed much experience with database development and application programming in the Esri product environment User training was performed jointly by ULRMC and ECOMM which streamlined the process of data entry and searching municipal staff members were instructed in the basic concepts of GIS and how to load their data into their GIS systems Users in Chop had an advantage in learning the new software because of their prior experience with using a digital cadastre system Since the two communities have different skill levels and priorities the two systems are being used for different purposes Chop is focusing on digitizing its parcel data while in Svalyava the emphasis is on assembling base data for roads Both communities intend to add layers as resources permit city officials see many practical uses for ArcView such as delineating voting districts based on population distribution optimizing routes for garbage collection and snow removal and ensuring that local taxes are collected fairly Another goal is to analyze environmental information that will help city administrators improve water supplies and public safety ArcView will also be helpful in identifying areas of flood and landslide risks and for determining optimal evacuation routes The mayors of Chop and Svalyava have been strong advocates of the new systems demonstrating their capabilities to other local officials within Trans-Carpathia a visiting delegation of officials from Slovakia expressed surprise that such capabilities existed within Ukraine and commented that the systems were superior to their own Revtiy of Svalyava also created a presentation describing the town's new resources which he delivers to local schoolchildren to spark their interest in information technology and environmental issues in the community the municipal GIS project is generating interest among local officials in western Ukraine and in neighboring countries The systems are adaptable to the specific needs of each community and should improve city services the populace is more receptive to visible improvements in the infrastructure of their communities both mayors face a public relations challenge in communicating the somewhat less visible benefits of GIS technology for city administration For more information about USGS activities in Ukraine, contact Dr. Paul Hearn (e-mail: phearn@usgs.gov) Contact Us | Privacy | Legal | Site Map Spoiler: The narrative of the oblast being “dragged down” by national minorities during EIT does not hold water does not cancel the question of the quality of education and teaching of the Ukrainian language at schools for national minorities A few days before September, 1 the internet portal Osvita.ua published the annual External Independent Testing (EIT) rankings of all of the Ukrainian oblasts By ‘yet again’ we mean at least 4th consecutive year since these rankings were first published these truly shocking statistics are lost in the hustle and bustle of the last summer days and the festivities of the 1st day of school To ignore this problem will not only bear no fruit since these abysmal results of the Zakarpattia oblast come along with a quite sensitive and complex problem of national minorities living in the region an issue of language of instruction has proven quite contentious in view of the new law that has been adopted by the Ukrainian parliament This law has also led to a Ukrainian-Hungarian altercation and the aggravation of the relations between Ukraine and its Western neighbors and partners Infopost.Media has tried to puzzle out the EIT results we wanted to find out if there was any interdependence between the EIT results and the language of instruction has fuelled lots of speculations both in and out of Ukraine For reference: There are 604 schools in Zakarpattia 117 of which are national minority schools Hungarian is the language of instruction at 101 schools 14 schools teach their schoolchildren in Romanian The aforementioned ranking lists are compiled on the basis of the average marks that the participants of the EIT receive They are then calculated as the arithmetic mean of all the tests including the ones that the participant has failed The tests that have been failed receive the value of ‘0’ which means that the average mark may be lower than 100 points If a school leaver has not showed up on the test day this test will not be considered during calculations The percent marker of those who have received the necessary number of test points is also important The library of the 3rd school named after Zsigmond Perényi in Vynohradiv the Zakarpattia oblast has been ranking last for 4 consecutive years In 2017 the region came last with the average score of 88,2 only 67% of the region’s schoolchildren took the EIT The Lviv oblast topped the ranking list with the average score of 123,9 and 86% of the region’s schoolchildren who took the EIT In 2018 things turned from bad to worse in Zakarpattia The average score and the percentage of school children taking the exam dropped 2019 was a relatively successful year for Zakarpattia The average score stood at 91,7 with 70% of schoolchildren having sat the exam did not help the region to get out of the bottom of the rankings this has most likely to do with the fact that the Ukrainian Ministry of Education had lowered the admission score for the Ukrainian language tests for the schoolchildren representing national minorities The region’s performance has deteriorated compared to the previous years The average score has dropped to 101,8 with only 76% of school children having achieved the admission score We would also like to point out that during all these 4 years the Zakarpattia oblast has been accompanied by the Odesa oblast (4th place at the bottom in 2017 and 2019 2020 and 2021) and the Mykolaiv oblast (3rd place at the bottom in 2017 and 2019 Before 2020 the Chernivtsi oblast had also been keeping the above-mentioned oblasts company 2018 and 2019 this oblast took the penultimate place in 2020 and 2021 the Chernivtsi oblast suddenly left the company of outsiders having become a decent average performer with the 14th and 13th place in the rankings of the respective years We are about to check if such improvement was coincidental we are planning to find out the reasons for 2020 becoming a game-changing year for the success of the Chernivtsi oblast What are the reasons for Zakarpattia’s weak performance Having spoken to people involved in the educational process (conditional sampling of several schools’ directors) we have singled out 4 main factors affecting the quality of education in the Zakarpattia region the issue of polyethnicity is most often brought up in public discussions as the decisive one purporting that Hungarians and especially Romanians (since there are more schools of the latter minority) are weak in speaking and learning Ukrainian which can be substantiated by the local results of the abovementioned EIT we have compiled separate ranking lists for towns of Zakarpattia and its rayons as of 2021 These are the rankings based on the number and percentage of those who have failed the EIT the Hungarians of the town of Berehove have shown decent results even better than those produced by the residents of other towns of the region with no Hungarian minority The ranking of Zakarpattia’s towns looks like this: the first column shows the number of those who have not achieved the admission score with the second column standing for the percentage of the general number of schoolchildren who have sat the EIT: at first glance one may notice the possible correlation between the rankings and the ethnic composition of each of the rayons poor performance of such old rayons as Rakhiv and Irshava (with the latter being monoethnic)  calls this assumption into question *it should be noted that this table deals with the administrative structure of the Zakarpattia oblast consisting of 13 rayons This structure is still being used by the Ukrainian centre for educational quality assessment there are 6 rayons in the Zakarpattia oblast if we take a look at the situation in villages we will see that in 2021 the villages dominated by the Hungarian minority have at first sight shown extremely poor results in such subjects as the Ukrainian language and literature (the tests in these subjects are obligatory In the Ukrainian-speaking village of Kam’yanytsya located in the same rayon 46,6% of schoolchildren of the best performing school could not pass the Ukrainian language and literature test In Serednye and Storozhnytsya 30% of schoolchildren have not passed this very test the performance of rural schools in Zakarpattia is just as poor as that of the  Hungarian ones There are also other examples of urban schools with the Ukrainian language of instruction whose schoolchildren perform much worse at the Ukrainian language test than those who attend the schools with the Hungarian language of instruction 100% of the Hungarian lyceum have passed the Ukrainian language EIT The results of the school Nr 10 of Uzhhorod are a bit worse with 14% of students having failed the test in the school Nr 9 with the Ukrainian language of instruction 18,52% of schoolchildren have failed the test The result of the school Nr 19 with the same language of instruction is even worse never mind the Centre for technical and vocational education – 40% of its pupils have not passed the test This year the Zakarpattia oblast lyceum with enhanced military and physical training named after the Heroes of the Red Field has been notorious for its 26% pupils who have not passed the Ukrainian language EIT The same happened to the local Centre for technical and vocational education and the Mukachevo agricultural college We deliberately have conducted a more thorough analysis of the Rakhiv rayon which is considered the centre of Zakarpattian Ukrainians with no representatives of the Hungarian minority except for the village of Yasinya Why does Zakarpattia trail so much in the EIT we would first of all like to raise the alarm The situation in Zakarpattia appears to be catastrophic Not only do determined measures need to be taken there is also a need of in-depth and professional analytics that would help find the solution to a complex problem The editorial office of Infopost.Media is planning to continue studying this topic we are inviting you to follow our new and old publications on education in the polyethnic environment exclusively for InfoPost.Media