Senior high school without classes: from September 2026 a pilot in 150 lyceums, groups — from 8 students
Full transition — in September 2027; students will rank profile preferences, with automatic allocation if places are insufficient
From September 2026, a pilot of the updated senior specialized school will be launched in 150 lyceums across Ukraine, with an emphasis on individual choice of subjects and profiles instead of fixed “classes”, and a full transition to the new model is planned for September 2027, the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) reported.
The key change involves abandoning the classroom-subject “single-track” system, where an entire year group follows one profile; instead, education will be organized around individual educational trajectories for each senior student.
Lyceums will form flexible profile groups at students’ request: if there are at least 8 students in a grade willing to study a specific subject in depth, the institution is obliged to open such a group.
Timetables will become flexible: for core subjects stable class cohorts will be retained, while for profile subjects students will be grouped into changing groups, allowing combinations of different directions without being tied to a single class “label”.
“For lyceum administration this means the need to plan the network of profiles, teacher workload, use of classrooms and schedule formation in a new way. It is this model that makes it possible to ensure real profiling even where the number of students does not allow opening separate profile classes,” said Deputy Minister of Education and Science Nadiya Kuzmichova.
A priority-choice mechanism is provided: a student may submit several preferred profiles, and if the required group is not formed or places are insufficient, the system will automatically offer the next indicated option.
Lyceum heads are advised to already collect and analyze requests from 9th-grade students, check the readiness of laboratories and classrooms to work with changing groups, and also explore the possibilities of international projects such as DECIDE for modeling an optimal network of profiles.
Previously we wrote:
- 10 profiles for 10th grade: how learning for Ukrainian senior students will change
- Minus a quarter of students: Mykolaiv now has only 34.6 thousand schoolchildren, a third — remotely
- Mykolaiv may lose lyceums: a draft law would leave thousands of senior students without education
- A school without coercion: the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) allowed senior students to choose subjects independently
- Major educational reform: Ukraine introduces 12-year schooling!





