Ukraine: Air Raid Sirens Halted One In Every Five Lessons This School Year

Air raid sirens forced children in Ukraine to miss an average of one in every five school lessons during the past academic year that ends this week with pupils preparing the third consecutive summer under war, Save the Children said.

In some regions, pupils missed over half of their classes during the 2024-2025 academic year due to air raid sirens, according to a Save the Children analysis of publicly available data [2] about the frequency of air raid alerts and impact on education from 2 September 2024 to 11 May 2025.

Save the Children's analysis, using methodology developed this year, [2] found if students had five lessons in a typical day, on average they would miss one due to air raid sirens. This sustained disruption is putting an entire generation’s learning and development at risk, and chipping away at children’s mental wellbeing.

The most significant disruptions to the education process occurred in the northern and central regions of Ukraine - those closest to the frontline of fighting. Children in the Sumy region were the most impacted, missing an estimated 85% of all scheduled lessons, equivalent to about 700 out of 830 lessons. Kharkiv and Donetsk regions had visibly higher losses than most other regions, with students missing over two thirds of lessons over the year.

For the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, territories located near active hostilities, students missed out on over 40% of lessons. The analysis is released in the same week as the 10th anniversary of the Safe Schools Declaration , [1] the inter-governmental political commitment to protect schools, students and teachers during armed conflict. It is based on methodology developed by the Center for Education in Emergencies Research as part of the 2024-2026 Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP Ukraine), funded by the global fund Education Cannot Wait.

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Across Ukraine, children live in constant fear of potential attacks that frequently keep them home from school, as air raid sirens often start in the morning and persist throughout the school day. 

Since February 2022, more than 4,000 educational institutions have been damaged or destroyed, including 229 schools, 110 kindergartens, and 97 universities. Air raid sirens in Ukraine are only activated in case of a real threat or emergency.

When a siren sounds, teachers must immediately stop the lesson and escort children to a shelter. Classes can only resume if the shelter is properly equipped as a temporary learning space which is rarely the case. Even in schools operating online due to security concerns or a lack of shelters, lessons are interrupted as children must still seek shelter during alerts.

Students must remain in a safe place until the threat has passed. With the escalation of conflict coming just a year after schools re-opened following the COVID-19 pandemic, the toll of lost learning has been immense. UNESCO data shows that schools in Ukraine were fully closed for 125 learning days [3] during the pandemic and partially closed for a further 95.

A quarter of children - 24% - are still restricted to online learning only, due to lack of shelters in schools and other security issues.

Halyna-, a mother and a teacher from Mykolaiv, who teaches in person, said:

"Our children have been through such a distressing experience. They constantly read news channels, they understand what ballistics are, how missiles are launched, their potential trajectory, and the different types of explosions. They know what it means when a missile is launched and when it hits. They understand all of it. But understanding doesn’t take away the fear. The psychological stress they’re under is immense."

Sonia Khush, Country Director for Save the Children in Ukraine, said:

"Children in Ukraine, especially those who live in the East and near the frontline, are under constant stress because of air raid sirens both day and night. "Due to bombs and drones, school is no longer a safe space. All parties to the conflict must protect education - schools, kindergartens, universities - in line with the commitments of the Safe Schools Declaration. While Ukraine has been forced to get used to a new normal, children’s rights must be guaranteed. We call on the international community, governments, and all parties to the conflict to ensure the safety of schools and uphold children’s right to learn in peace".

May 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the Safe Schools Declaration. A total of 121 states have committed to taking concrete steps to prevent attacks on education, avoid the use of schools for military purposes, and safeguard the right to learn even in times of crisis.

As the Declaration states, " Every boy and girl have the right to an education without fear of violence or attack. Every school should be a protected space for students to learn, and fulfill their potential, even during war."

Save the Children has been working in Ukraine since 2014. Since 24 February 2022, the children’s rights agency has dramatically scaled up its operations and now has a team of 250 staff based in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Dnipro, Donetsk and Chernivtsi. Working with more than 25 partners, the organisation has provided essential support and reached more than 3.44 million people, including around 1.4 million children.

Notes:

[1] In November 2019, Ukraine became the 100th country to endorse the Safe Schools Declaration.

[2] Save the Children broadly followed the methodology adopted in this Center of Excellence of Education study to estimate lessons lost due to air raid alerts that occurred on school days and during school hours, using a publicly accessible database of air raid alerts available here. Only oblast level alerts were considered. Since the length of the school day and the number and length of lessons varies by grade, we took averages to work out estimates across school children of all ages. Given that an alert is likely to lead to learning disruption longer than just the length of the alert, following Vox Ukraine’s methodology, we considered any alert in secondary school of between 5 and 59 minutes as leading to the loss of an entire lesson, while for primary students a lesson was considered lost as a result of any alert lasting between 5 and 54 minutes since primary school lessons are shorter. School holidays vary between schools; however, we followed announcements in local news articles to guide identification of holiday days which with weekends and public holidays were not counted in the calculations.

[3] Excluding holidays

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