Printer-friendly version

Nowadays self-government is one of the forms of student’s participation in everyday life of the university and sometimes the society. At first sight it is all simple: student’s self-government is when students organize on their own, remove part of the duties from the administration of the high school and perform independently. But the complexity is that nobody has negotiated the exact duties of student's self-management.

It is interesting that people are often involved into student's self-management because they lack “something” in everyday life in high school, because they want to obtain experience in management and organization of group activity and simply because it is just interesting to be engaged in “something”. But, unfortunately, seldom one can reason out what that “something” is, because it really requires much effort, it is easier to follow well-trodden path and simply to get engaged in “something”.

Often bodies of student's self-management are integrated into high or middle school structures. That is, not students self organizing, but the educational institution creates these bodies. In high school there is a special person responsible for the work of student's self-management bodies. It turns out that we want to be independent; however, we are a part of the educational institution. And, as it is known, a hand cannot live independently from a body though sometimes it makes some spontaneous movements. In Russia, for example, presence of student's self-management bodies in educational institutions is an obligatory attribute — otherwise the accreditation may not be prolonged.

Students of Ukraine have chosen their own way to develop student's self-management. For some years they’ve been trying to achieve adoption of the law concerning student's self-management. (Law #1798 “On modification of the law of Ukraine “About higher education”) The forum of the Ukrainian Association of Student's Self-management that took place in Kiev was dedicated to the questions of introduction of the law for student's self-management. More than 130 people from allover (all parts of) Ukraine, as well as representatives of Russia and Belarus, discussed on March, 5 till March, 7th. Among the most important questions were the following:
- how the students’ movement of Ukraine should develop in 2010-2015;
- what difficulties could be faced in high school during the introduction of the new law and what practice is already available;
- what normative legal documents still need to be developed so that the law should not only exist, but output the utmost;
- how to receive the legally prescribed financing for the activity of the student's self-management bodies from an educational institution;
- who of the student's self-management body should make the final decision on some questions, such as: dismissal of students, residing and eviction from a hostel, etc.