The purchase of textbooks for 8th grade students in 2025 turned into a large-scale corruption scheme involving the top management of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. At the center of the story are the Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi, his first deputy Yevhen Kudryavets, and the director of the Institute for Modernization of Educational Content Yevhen Bazhenkov. It was they who set the key conditions of tenders and distributed billion-dollar budgets, creating conditions for abuse and non-transparent deals.
The purchases were not made through open tenders, as required by law, but through direct negotiations with a limited number of “friendly” publishing houses — in particular, “Ranok”, “Geneza” and “Aston”. Formally, this scheme was explained by the publishers’ exclusive property rights, but in reality it was about monopolizing the market and blocking any competition.
A vivid example of corrupt overpricing was the cost of the textbook for the integrated course "Ukrainian Language, Ukrainian and Foreign Literature" from the publishing house "Ranok", which was estimated at almost 4 thousand hryvnias per copy. After public outcry, the price was slightly reduced, explaining everything as a "technical error", but suspicions of manipulations in the calculation remained. The price structure includes non-transparent costs, author's fees, and profitability that no one actually checks.
Thus, instead of providing children with quality education, the state finances profit-making schemes for a limited circle of individuals. The corruption model has damaged not only the budget, but also trust in the education system as a whole.
Based on the facts revealed, an official complaint has already been filed with a demand to investigate the procurement of textbooks for grade 8, to verify the activities of officials of the Ministry of Education and Science and the Institute for Modernization of Educational Content, and to take measures to stop abuses and restore transparency in the sphere of state procurement of educational literature.
