Lviv continues to develop systemic support for educators: the city has introduced cash awards, monthly bonuses, open competitions for leadership positions in education, and professional forums for teachers. The outcomes of these programmes were presented by the Director of the Department of Education and Culture of the Lviv City Council, Andrii Zakaliuk, during a final live broadcast.
This year, the city’s “Lviv Education Award” programme received a record 579 applications. An expert panel selected 150 of the best educators from schools, nurseries, vocational institutions and out-of-school education providers. Of these, 147 laureates received one-off awards of 35,000 UAH each, and three overall winners received 100,000 UAH each.
In parallel, the “Teachers Who Inspire” programme continues in the Lviv community. As part of this competition, more than 1,100 winners receive a bonus to their salary of 15,000 UAH per month throughout the year. At the first stage, it was the pupils themselves who chose their favourite teachers, casting more than 57,000 votes for them.
“Undoubtedly, every year we place a huge emphasis on supporting educators. The ‘Lviv Education Award’ and ‘Teachers Who Inspire’ are our permanent teacher support programmes. They come with financial incentives, and we are very pleased about that,” noted Andrii Zakaliuk.
Lviv teachers are also recognised at the national level. This year, Liudmyla Sakovych from the “Oriana” Lyceum and Yulia Ometiukh from the Ivan Puliui Lyceum made it into the top ten teachers in Ukraine according to the Global Teacher Prize Ukraine.
For six years now, school heads in the Lviv community have been appointed exclusively on the basis of open competitions. A total of 110 such competitions have been held, 37 of them during the last academic year. In 2026, this practice was for the first time extended to pre-school education institutions, with 19 competitions organised for the positions of nursery heads.
According to Andrii Zakaliuk, competitive selection makes it possible to attract strong managers to education management, including from other regions. In particular, he cited the example of a school head from Kamianske who came to Lviv, successfully passed the open competition and now leads School No. 60.
A separate area of work is the professional development and interaction of teachers. For the first time, Lviv hosted a major forum, “Points of Intersection”, which brought together educators and representatives of other spheres of public life. A separate forum, “Pre-school Wave”, was held for pre-school education staff.
In addition, the city joined in hosting one of the country’s largest education festivals, “Teachers of the Future”, becoming its co-organiser together with the School of the Free and Concerned and the organisation “Osvitoria”. According to Andrii Zakaliuk, Lviv signed a corresponding memorandum for this purpose.
Lviv also shares its experience with other communities in Ukraine: together with the School of Municipal Governance of UNBROKEN University, they organise learning residencies for teachers and education managers.