Abstract

The article deals with the peculiarities of the development and implementation of educational policy in the context of the decentralization reform in Ukraine. The main purpose of the article is to identify the main directions and difficulties of the development and implementation of educational policy in the context of the decentralization reform in Ukraine. The objectives of the article are to summarize the data of the problem under study and to distinguish the specifics of educational changes. The methodological basis for the study of educational policy includes general scientific methods of empirical and theoretical generalization, induction and synthesis, methods of comparative and legal analysis. Thus, the methods of empirical and theoretical generalization, in particular, are used to clarify the conditions, specifics and problems of the decentralization reform in Ukraine; deduction and induction, analysis and synthesis help to identify systemic problems in education. The result of the analysis is a theoretical understanding of the regulatory framework with the isolation of the problem points of the functioning of a decentralized educational system in Ukraine. It is determined that the main trend of modern educational policy is the commercialization of all aspects of education and training, which essentially delegitimizes the principle of equal access to quality education, which, in its turn, intensifies the search for adequate responses of the world and national educational spaces by the main stakeholders i.e. the state, commercial structures and civil society. Conclusion. It is concluded that the community and the state should jointly decide on the creation of strategic principles for reforming the educational process, monitoring its quality, strengthening the social protection of all participants, expanding the network of educational institutions, training and improving the skills of pedagogical and academic staff, and developing systems of labor motivation. The decentralized system of education functions through cooperation and coordination of the activities of many independent institutions, each of which has a legally defined scope of autonomy. Decentralization involves the creation of a governance system that, instead of vertical subordination, is based on the cooperation of independent institutions of different levels, governed by the provisions of the law. In Ukraine, this means that united communities, districts and regions will have autonomous, democratically elected bodies of local self-government, whose councils and executive bodies will act in accordance with the expectations of the local people who elected them. The autonomy of local authorities must be enshrined and guaranteed by law, and must be carefully defended by all stakeholders, including associations of local selfgovernment bodies. Particular attention is paid to the perspectives of implementing the concept of «New Ukrainian School» and the establishment of a network of reference schools. The components of the model of the «New Ukrainian School» should become a strategic basis for the development of a system of education in the united communities, which will cover not only the educational process but also the management of the entire educational network of the community as a whole