From May 7 to 21, the State Scientific Institution "Institute for Modernization of Educational Content" of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine concluded direct contracts for the printing of textbooks for grade 8 with a total value of over 1.06 billion hryvnias. This was reported by the resource "Nashi Groshi" with reference to the Prozorro public procurement system.
The largest sums went to three leading publishers:
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LLC "Ranok Publishing House" - UAH 242.3 million;
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Geneza LLC - UAH 235.6 million;
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LLC "Aston Publishing House" – UAH 103.1 million.
The most expensive of all orders was the textbook for the integrated course “Ukrainian Language, Ukrainian and Foreign Literature” in two parts, printed by the Ranok publishing house. Its cost was UAH 3,900 per copy with a print run of 481 copies. Of these, more than UAH 2,000 are printing costs, the rest are author’s fees, editorial work and permitted profitability. At the time of the order, this textbook had not yet been published on the MES website.
A similar situation has happened before: a similar edition for grade 7 cost 3,976 UAH per copy with a print run of only 209 copies. In this case, the printing cost was only 235 UAH.
The sharp increase in the cost of printing may be due to the loss of printing capacity due to the Russian missile strike on the Kharkiv printing house "Faktor-Druk" in May 2024. The publishing house "Ranok" reported the destruction of some of its products. In June, industry representatives stated that despite the shelling and problems with power supply, Kharkiv remains a key center for printing educational literature.
Among other small-run publications is the textbook "Polish Language" for schools with Polish as the language of instruction from SE "Svit", which was ordered for UAH 2,503 per copy with a print run of only 220 copies.
For comparison, large print runs were much cheaper. For example, "Civic Education" cost the state 58 UAH per copy with a print run of over 217,000 copies.
All agreements were concluded without competitive bidding. This is explained by the fact that the respective publishing houses have exclusive property rights to the textbooks recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science after competitive selection.
The owners of Kharkiv's "Ranok" are Viktor Kruglov and LLC "Publishing Group "Osnova", associated with Inna Grishina, Zaza Dzhedzheya, and Dmytro Tomashko.
The Kyiv-based publishing house "Geneza" is controlled by Oleksiy Dubas, Viktor Yezlovetskyy, Oleg Furman, and Vladlen Matsenko. The company is managed by Mykola Chayun.
Ternopil's Aston is owned by Ivan Bilakh, who is also the director of the publishing house.
