Air-raid alarms interrupted the school day on nearly two-thirds of school days in Ukraine in September and October 2026, UNICEF reported on 3 November. Data covering the period up to 20 October showed children experienced an average of 34 hours of alarms during school time, equal to more than 13 per cent of scheduled learning hours.

Alarms occurred on 65.9 per cent of school days in the two-month period, compared with around one-third (37.4 per cent) in the same months of 2025. The average duration of school-time alarms almost doubled between September 2025 and September 2026, and in Kyiv the number of such alarms rose from 12 to 71 over the same comparison. In Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad and Kharkiv regions, children experienced more than 60 hours of school-time alarms, roughly a quarter of scheduled learning hours, affecting more than 560,000 children, UNICEF said.

UNICEF also said the UN has verified almost 2,000 attacks on educational facilities since the start of the full-scale war, including some 270 in 2026 alone. The agency said it continues working with the Government of Ukraine and partners on safe learning, including school shelters, learning recovery and mental health support.