FEATURES OF ENSURING TRANSPARENT AND EFFICIENT BUDGETARY FUNDING OF EDUCATION UNDER THE MARTIAL LAW

Abstract

The article addresses current issues related to ensuring transparency and efficiency of budget financing in the education sector under martial law. The authors analyze approaches to ensuring monitoring and transparency in the use of budget funds, which is particularly important during times when Ukraine is facing challenging circumstances, and the issue of rational allocation of available financial resources becomes critical. The article provides an overview of the amount of budgetary funding for education in Ukraine, which has been reduced since the beginning of russia's large-scale war against Ukraine. It is substantiated that one of the ways to address above-mentioned issues is to ensure transparency and effectiveness in budget financing of education by implementing additional financial control measures, primarily by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. Furthermore, the authors propose the development of relevant performance indicators for educational institutions with a corresponding correlation to the allocated budget financing. At present, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine's control over the designated and efficient use of targeted subventions at the local level has a number of shortcomings: insufficient methodological quality of data in relevant reports, lack of internal automatic data integrity controls, violation of reporting deadlines by respondents, outdated approach of sending out Excel templates for forms and collecting them on the e-mails of authorized specialists, etc. Insufficient use of modern tools for reporting, and consequently, ineffective control over the allocation and use of targeted funding from the state budget by budget managers, limits the effectiveness of managerial decision-making, creates a constant systemic risk of deteriorating education development at the local level. It is necessary to introduce financial reporting for each educational institution, which will allow for an appropriate analysis of the effectiveness of budget spending. In turn, the process of collecting, processing and disseminating such financial statements of educational institutions requires appropriate automation. Automation of the process will enable the quick and efficient processing of reports and the identification of risk areas. In particular, it is advisable to create an information and analytical system for collecting and analyzing financial reports of educational institutions to provide conditions for making management decisions based on reliable and evidence-based data.