In Ukraine, a significant increase in the minimum salary for teachers is planned for 2026. According to new data, educators will be able to expect a minimum salary of 21,000 hryvnias per month. This will be an important step towards improving the social protection of educators, who have long received some of the lowest salaries among all sectors.
This is reported by Finway
Current Salaries in Education and Culture
According to statistics, the average salary for education workers currently stands at only 16,984 hryvnias. Even lower are the salaries for library, museum, and archive workers — 14,531 hryvnias, as well as in the fields of creativity, arts, and entertainment — 14,809 hryvnias. It is worth noting that these amounts are stated before the deduction of personal income tax (18%) and military tax (5%), which significantly reduces the real income of industry employees.
Sources of Funding for Salary Increases
The issue of low salaries affects not only teachers but also other categories of educators. Minister of Education and Science Oksen Lisovyi emphasized that workers in preschool and extracurricular education, as well as instructors of specialized subjects and vocational training masters in vocational education institutions and specialized colleges, remain overlooked. The responsibility for funding salaries in these areas falls on local government bodies.
“The minimum salary will be from 21,000 hryvnias. This is one of the reasons why we had to support the Budget-2026,” noted Hetmantsev.
The Ministry of Education and Science, together with communities, is working to find opportunities to increase salaries through additional revenues from personal income tax (PIT). According to Lisovyi, communities have 17 billion hryvnias remaining from the educational subsidy, as well as 6.5 billion hryvnias in additional funds from the increase in PIT. These resources are intended primarily for raising the salaries of those categories of educators who fall under the jurisdiction of local authorities.
The minister paid special attention to funding issues in frontline regions, where additional revenues may be insufficient. However, the new law on preschool education, passed by parliament, allows communities to independently set salary levels outside the tariff grid according to their own financial capabilities.