Dear educators, pupils, students and parents!

I congratulate you on the Knowledge Day and on the beginning of the new academic year with all my heart!

The Knowledge Day is not only the start of the next stage of studies, not just a national and nationwide holiday. It is also a house-warming and a uniting holiday. Because on this day children will sit at the same desks, they will have the same teachers and their parents’ political views will stay outside schools.

I am sure that the new academic year will become another step on the way to development of education and we will be able to achieve all we have planned. And do we have something to be proud of! For the last few years we have created the necessary prerequisites for a real, far from being «cosmetic» reforming of education –revision of its contents.

Dear educators and lecturers, your great mission is not just to give knowledge to pupils and students and help them choose their careers. Your task is to educate full-fledged members of society, where each one is a personality and a patriot of the Motherland.

There is an opinion that as many books a person has read so many lives he has lived. We also remember a wonderful thing once pronounced by Anton Chekhov: «As many languages you know - so many times you are a man». So what should we say about the educator, who helped a child to read a book or to learn a new language? How many times is he a personality? A great number of times! So, that’s the whole point of the teacher’s special status.

So, I am bowing my head respectfully before teachers and lecturers for their daily hard work and noble deed. I am bowing my head before those who give knowledge and the warmth of their hearts, giving away to every pupil a part of their souls.

I am cordially addressing myself to the first-year school and university students. Remember, you can overcome the difficulties with the power of knowledge. A powerful and prosperous country begins with classrooms, university lecture halls, gyms, libraries and laboratories. Your aspiration for learning, your creative thinking and self-actualization are a formula for success of lives.

Let me wish all of you successful academic year, good health, happiness, inexhaustible energy and creative achievements. Let beautiful feelings warm your hearts and fill them up with festive mood!

Minister of Education and Science, Youth and Sports
DmytroTabachnyk