Lithuanian schools are ready to accept about 30,000 Ukrainian children, with 4,000 places available at kindergartens, according to Education, Sciences and Sports Minister Jurgita Šiugždinienė. “Today, we have almost 12,000 [Ukrainian] children under the age of 18. Almost 3,500 of them are enrolled in schools and kindergartens,” Šiugždinienė said on March 22 during the parliament session, adding that even more Ukrainian children are already going to schools in Lithuania but “the register is lagging behind”. According to the minister, most Ukrainian families have settled in major Lithuanian cities of Vilnius, Kaunas, and Klaipėda, with only about 30 percent choosing smaller municipalities.
Over 700 teachers from Ukraine, mostly of English and Ukrainian languages, have already registered in Lithuania, as well as around 200 Ukrainian students, who wish to continue their studies in Lithuanian universities, Šiugždinienė said. All Lithuanian schools can accept Ukrainian children, and currently, nearly 50 percent of them study at national minority schools, while the rest are enrolled in Lithuanian schools and study in the Lithuanian.
According to the data published by the Statistics Department on March 22, almost 27,000 war refugees from Ukraine, including 11,700 minors, have already registered in Lithuania.
The ministry of education, science and sport said that 675 children from Ukraine were registered in schools in Vilnius, 436 in Kaunas, and 460 in Klaipėda.
On March 24, Vilnius City Council decided to provide a one-time payment of 252 euros for people fleeing the war in Ukraine. It will be available to people who have fled Ukraine as a result of the Russian aggression and settled in Vilnius. They will be able to receive the allowance before they are granted a temporary residence permit in Lithuania. The payment will be allocated within 10 working days of the submission of the application and the necessary documents, according to the Vilnius City Council’s press release.
Applicants will be required to provide a personal identity document, a notice issued by the Migration Department on the submission of an application for a temporary residence permit in the Republic of Lithuania, and a bank account number.
There are already around 10,000 people in the city of Vilnius who have fled the war in Ukraine. LRT.lt
