The genesis of educational traditions of Volyn goes back to the ancient Rus period and is commonly associated with the emergence of writing in the Eastern Slavs’culture. Scholars consider it as the consequence of the medieval state creation, introduction and the spread of Christianity. Close trade relations with neighbors, including Byzantium, facilitated the emergence of writing. With the establishment of Christianity, reading and writing were taught in schools at Orthodox monasteries and churches. The archival documents testify that at the Lutsk St. John Theologian Church, young men who devoted themselves to spiritual/ ecclesiastical service had to master literacy.
The Volyn region was then a part of Rus with its center in Kyiv, and therefore, national, cultural, and educational processes extended to its territory too. However, the chronicles, in their traditional form that existed in the capital yet in the tenth century, appeared in Volyn only in the thirteenth century. A vivid example of this is the Galician-Volyn chronicle, which, although being created on the model of Kyivan ones, represents the features of local tradition.
During the Galician-Volyn State period, when the Volynian land was a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the main centers of education, like in the days of the Russian state, continued to function at churches and monasteries. Those schools were traditional by nature and provided only basic primary education. Prince Volodymyr Vasylkovych (1269–1288), the nephew of Danylo Halytskyi, played a prominent role in spreading education in Volyn. Probably, at his court, there existed an education center.
At the monasteries, in addition to their spiritual/religious service, specially-trained persons were engaged in book-writing. They were called scribes (knyzhnyky). In the middle of the 13th century, the first monastic libraries appeared in Volyn, and they had been gradually developing since that time. The most prominent historical monuments of local book culture are the Lutsk Gospel of the 14th century, the Lutsk Psalter of 1384, and the Peresopnytsia Gospel of 1556–1561.
The penetration of Western Christianity into the region led to the emergence of multilevel Latin-language Catholic schools that coexisted with Orthodox educational institutions. Sources record the activities of the Lutsk parish Latin school in the middle of the 16th century. In 1577, the Volynian nobleman Vasyl Zahorovskyi informed about the activities of a school at the St. Illia Orthodox Church in Volodymyr. This educational institution was founded in the first half of the XVI century. The Zymne Orthodox Monastery also conducted an efficient educational activity. There were no higher education institutions in Volyn at that time. Young people from wealthy bourgeois families went to study abroad, in particular at the University of Krakow.
The entry of Volyn into the Rzeczpospolita marked a new and controversial stage in the development of the educational process in the region. That was a period when the Orthodox Church lost its previous strong position, the period of strengthening the position of Catholicism, marked by the Orthodox population transition to the union, intensive Polonization processes, and the development of Reformation movements. At the same time, the Ukrainian lands got the opportunity to enjoy the achievements of Western civilization. The educational process of this period was confessional in nature. The Orthodox population continued getting their education at home and in church schools or monasteries. At the same time, there appeared schools in brotherhoods – religious and public organizations that functioned in Orthodox parishes. Around 1617, the Lutsk Brotherhood of the Holy Cross Exaltation was established, aiming to protect the national and religious rights of the Orthodox in the area. Its famous members were the nobleman Lavrentiy Drevinsky, Bishop Athanasius Puzyna, Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky, Danylo Bratkovsky, an outstanding public figure and poet, and others. The Lutsk Brotherhood is also associated with the name of Halshka Hulevychivna, a well-known patron and a founder of the Kyiv Brotherhood School, who bequeathed her funds to the Lutsk Brotherhood Monastery and its church.
There was a school at the Lutsk Brotherhood, which in 1620 received its own house. The students studied a variety of subjects there, including languages and singing. Academic subjects were taught at a high level. Elisei Ilkovskyi, Pavlo Bosinskyi Augustin Slavinskyi, and others were the most prominent teachers who worked at this school. There is an assumption that a well-known Ukrainian icon painter Yov Kondzelevych taught at the Lutsk Brotherhood School. The school students were mostly burghers by their social status. According to Academician Yaroslav Isaievych, in its heyday, this educational institution was one of the leading brotherhood schools in Ukraine. In Volyn, the school and printing house also operated under the Kremenets Brotherhood patronage. The most famous book published in this printing house was Kremenets Grammar, based on the grammar of Meletius Smotrytsky.
The Ostroh cultural and educational center, and personally Prince Vasyl-Konstiantyn Ostrozkyi, played a significant role in preserving the spiritual culture of the Ukrainian people. The Ostroh Academy was founded in 1576 on his initiative and material support,. It was the first higher education institution in Eastern Europe. Students studied seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In addition, they studied such sciences as Philosophy, Medicine, Theology, and languages. Hetman of the Registered Cossacks and Ataman of the Zaporozhian Sich Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachnyi, such well-known writers and church leaders as Meletii Smotrytskyi, Iov Boretskyi, and others studied at the Ostroh Academy. The educational institution functioned until 30s of the 17th century. Owing to Prince Vasyl Ostrozkyi, Ivan Fedorov's printing house was founded, where the Ostroh Bible, the first Ukrainian Primer, and other unique books were published.
In addition to the Orthodox educational institutions in Volyn, there were also institutions established by the clergy of the Greek Catholic Church introduced in the region in 1596 as a result of the Brest Union. The monastic order of Greek Catholics (Basilian Fathers) carried out significant cultural and educational activities. The monasteries of this Order founded schools of two types – three-grade and six-grade ones. In the former, they studied rhetoric and poetics, and in the latter, they additionally learned Philosophy. The sources recorded Basilian schools in Lutsk, Derman, Zymne, Rivne, Ostroh, and Volodymyr. At Volodymyr school, for example, the students studied a course of Natural Sciences and Philosophy, paying particular attention to the heritage of Nicolaus Copernicus, a famous Polish scientist and author of the heliocentric theory of the solar system structure.
Schools at the Catholic and Protestant churches also participated actively in the educational process. The parish schools' activity is worth mentioning in the context of Latin educational institutions. In Lutsk, they operated at the Trinity Cathedral and the local Dominican monastery. According to the records, the first representatives of the Society of Jesus, the largest Roman Catholic monastic Order (better known as the Jesuit Order) appeared in Volyn at the beginning of the 17th century. The Order was founded in 1534 by the knight and priest Ignatius Loyola. The main goal of it was to oppose the Reformation processes, actively spreading in Europe at that time, and to strengthen the positions of Catholicism. The Jesuits carried out active educational and propagandist work among the population, creating their own educational institutions, so-called collegiums. Humanitarian education at these institutions was of high quality. They paid particular attention to developing competitive skills in their students. The Jesuit schools provided equal educational opportunities for both Catholic and Orthodox youth. In Volyn area, there were Jesuit collegiums in Lutsk, Ostroh, Klevan, and Kremenets. The Lutsk collegium began its activity in 1609 and the students studied not only grammar, poetics, and rhetoric there but also the Old Slavic language. In the 30s of the 17th century, philosophy was taught there sporadically. The Ostroh Jesuit Collegium conducted educational activity from 1625 to 1773 and was considered one of the most powerful institutions of this kind in Poland.
The proof of the Reformation movement in Volyn is the emergence of Protestant educational institutions on its territory that were distinguished by a high level of teaching and which successfully competed with Orthodox and Catholic schools. The students studied there not only Christian doctrines but also seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), as well as the Hebrew, Greek, Church Slavonic, and Latin languages.
The educational institutions related to the rationalist Movement of the Protestant Socinians were significantly popular in Volyn. Those schools' activities were recorded in Kyselyn, Goshcha, Ostroh, and Rafalivka. The most noteworthy was the Socinian school in Kyselyn, founded by Ostafii Kysil in 1614. In 1638, a higher education institution, the Academy, was opened on its basis. Teaching methodology there was at a high didactic level relying on the textbooks by Jan Amos Komensky, a famous Czech thinker and teacher. During the time of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the educational activities in the Jewish communities of Volyn were of great importance. They had their own system of schools.
In the last third of the eighteenth century, under the influence of the Enlightenment trends, the reform of education was held in Central and Eastern Europe. Its main goal was to exclude religious issues from school programs and widely introduce natural science topics into curricula. The reform, initiated by Polish King Stanislaw August Poniatowskyi, also spread to the Ukrainian lands that were a part of the Commonwealth and involved Volyn too. After the abolition of the Catholic Jesuit Order in 1773, a new type of school was formed according to the concept developed by the newly-formed National Education Commission (a state school-governing body that functioned from 1773 to 1794). The commission controlled all schools in the country. The territory of the Commonwealth was divided into 10 educational districts. Volyn district’s center was in Kremenets. All schools were divided into six-grade district schools and three-grade sub-district ones. One of such institutions was the Lutsk three-grade school, with a staff of three teachers and 60-120 students. The school was famous for its "good traditions and skillful teachers" who provided a high level of teaching and learning.
After the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth partitions, when Volyn was annexed to the Russian Empire, the education system underwent new reforms marked by a severe russification. In general, the educational system of the Russian state included primary schools, county schools, gymnasiums, and universities. The Orthodox Church-affiliated institutions, such as the Volyn Theological Seminary, also operated in the region. Vocational education was provided by agricultural schools.
Educational institutions of the Volyn province were subordinated to the Vilnius district educational bodies. Lutsk was a county town at that time and thus, a county school functioned in it. In the first third of the 19th century, about 200 students studied there. Documentary materials from 1822 to 1823 manifest that there were four classes in this school. The teaching staff consisted of a principal, six teachers and two chaplains (Orthodox and Roman Catholic). The curriculum determined the list of subjects per each grade: in the first grade – “religion sciences", Polish and Latin Grammar, Geography, and Arithmetic; in the second grade – the History of the Old and New Testaments, Polish and Latin grammars, Geography, and Arithmetic; in the third - the Creed, Polish and Latin Grammars, Ancient History, Geometry, Arithmetic, Physical Geography, Trigonometry, Practical Geography, and Latin-Polish and Polish-Latin translations; in the fourth grade – Rhetoric and Poetry, Russian History, the History of Rome, Geometry, Algebra, Physics, and Natural History. Russian and German were taught in all grades. Very few students completed the full course of study (in 1822, there were only seven of them). In addition to the county school, there was also a parish school at the Trinitarian monastery in Lutsk, with only 13–15 students.
In the first third of the 19th century, the Volyn province had a developed school network in terms of that time. In 1830–1831 there were about 100 parish (primary) and 14 secondary schools in this area. Most of the students were children of the poor Volyn gentry, a certain percentage of them – the sons of Uniate priests and burghers, but children of peasants also studied in those parish schools. As for the teaching staff, only some of the teachers had a university degree.
When it comes to gymnasium education, the activity of the Volyn gymnasium in Kremenets in 1805–1833 (since 1818 known as the lyceum) is rather illustrative. It was founded by Tadeusz Chatskyi and Hugo Kollontai, famous scientists and public figures. The educational institution was located in several rooms, mostly in the buildings of the terminated Kremenets Jesuit monastery.
The institution was headed by a director who was in charge of administrative and financial affairs and pedagogical staff. The gymnasium involved a school of surveyors and a school of practical mechanics/engineers. The full course of study lasted 10 years. The program covered the study of compulsory and optional subjects (not only Mathematics, Logic, History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry, Law, Literature and various languages, but also Astronomy, Practical Mechanics, Hydraulics, Anatomy, Surgery, Veterinary Medicine, etc.). Kremenets Lyceum owned a printing house and a rich book fund of 24 thousand copies. There were books from the library of the last Polish king Stanislaw August Poniatowski in it. The educational complex consisted of an astronomical observatory, a meteorological station, a botanical garden, and specialized classrooms (numismatic, zoological, physical, and mineralogical). There were two dormitories at the disposal of the students. Children from families of various social strata (Polish nobility, burghers, or clergy) studied free of charge.
Owing to the Volyn gymnasium, the county town of Kremenets became a leading center of the cultural and educational life of right-bank Ukraine. Many outstanding personalities studied there at various times, including Juliusz Słowacki, one of the most prominent Polish poets of the Romantic era, Timko Padura, a native of Kremenets and a poet, a Polish radical politician Stanislaw Gabriel Worzel, and others.
After the defeat of the Polish November Uprising of 1830–1831, the situation in the educational domain of Volyn deteriorated sharply. In April 1831, a decree was issued which abolished the schools run by the Roman Catholic monasteries and obliged all secular schools to introduce compulsory teaching of all subjects in Russian. Those processes affected the Kremenets Lyceum too, as it was considered a place of Polish identity. In 1833, this educational institution was transferred to Kyiv, where St. Volodymyr University was founded on its basis..
In the same year, the Volyn Gymnasium for male (known also as First Zhytomyr Gymnasium or the Volyn Provincial Gymnasium) was opened in Zhytomyr (the center of Volyn Province). Its activity flourished during the time when a famous Polish writer and publicist Józef Kraszewski lived there. The writer Volodymyr Korolenko studied at this educational institution (as well as at the Rivne Gymnasium), among whose most famous works are The Blind Musician (1886) and The Children of the Dungeon (1886). Vyacheslav Lypynsky, Ukrainian politician, historian, philosopher, sociologist, theorist of Ukrainian conservatism, one of the founders of the Ukrainian Democratic-Agricultural Party, and in time of the Ukrainian State of Pavlo Skoropadsky, Ambassador of Ukraine to Austria, also studied here. (V. Lypynsky studied also at Lutsk and Kyiv gymnasiums).
Some growth in the number of educational institutions of various levels in the Volyn province was observed in the 1840s and 1850s. At that time, there were almost 70 institutions with about 3.5 thousand students in the region. Secondary education was provided by two gymnasiums and four aristocratic county schools in Teofipolsk, Ostroh, Novograd-Volynsk, and Lutsk. They were subject to inspection by the director of schools in the Volyn province. Each school employed 5–7 teachers, Orthodox and Catholic priests, and a principal. The students learned Mathematics, History, Drawing, Russian, German, French, Latin, and the Law of God there. In different years, 140–150 students studied in Lutsk County School.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Russian autocracy carried out the russification of Volyn via the system of education. The conservatism of the educational system of the Russian Empire and the unwillingness of the lower echelons of the authorities to involve all segments of society in the educational process led to an unsatisfactory state of schooling in Volyn. In the last third of the nineteenth century, the local community got worried about the lack of gymnasiums in Lutsk and nearby county towns such as Volodymyr-Volynsk, Kovel, and Dubno. It complicated equal access to secondary and, consequently, to higher education for the county residents. Therefore, the representatives of the local nobility, officials, and the military came up with the idea of opening at least one gymnasium in the region.
In1884, Lutsk City Duma adopted a resolution on transferring the right-wing part of the former Monastery of Brigid's building to the future gymnasium. However, due to excessive humidity, it appeared unsuitable for the location of the educational institution in it. The initiative group developed a project for a four-grade gymnasium establishment with its subsequent reorganization into an eighth-grade gymnasium and submitted it to the Kyiv educational district curator for approval by several ministries. But there was no resolution on the issue for several years because the Ministry of Education considered it inappropriate to open a gymnasium in Lutsk. Instead, the Ministry suggested establishing a vocational school of technical or agricultural profile in the town. The Curator of the Kyiv educational district advised the Lutsk mayor to aim at the opening of only a four-grade men's gymnasium, the maintenance of which required 13,450 rubles annually. City budget owned such funds.
The imperial decree of July 4, 1894, served as a basis for opening a progymnasium in Lutsk. The four-grade gymnasium for men began activities on September 30, 1895, in the building of the former Bernardine monastery. Three years later, it was reorganized into a six-grade gymnasium and, in 1908 – into an eight-grade gymnasium for men. There was also a preparatory class in it and "parallel classes for the fourth and fifth grades"(i.e. 4 "B" and 5 "B" classes).
In 1910, Mykhailo Kravchuk, Ukrainian mathematician, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, and a professor of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, graduated from Lutsk gymnasium with a gold medal. M. Kravchuk is a prominent Ukrainian scientist whose methods were used by the USA, Japan, and other countries when developing cybernetic technologies. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a private gymnasium for women started its work in Lutsk.
Children of Lutsk residents could receive primary and incomplete secondary education at two parish schools and two two-grade town schools for men (one of them had a class for women), which, of course, did not meet the needs of the local residents. Before the First World War, Ukrainians in Volyn did not have a single school with the instruction in their native language. In 1905, Olena Pchilka, as a member of the Ukrainian intellectuals' delegation in St. Petersburg, met with Serhiy Witte, the head of the imperial government, and demanded permission to introduce Ukrainian-language schooling and printing in the region but unsuccessfully.
The events of the First World War led to significant positive changes in the educational space of Volyn. The Galician Bureau of Cultural Aid to the Ukrainian Population on the Occupied Lands, headed by Ivan Krypiakevych, a prominent Ukrainian historian, archeographer, pedagogue, and public figure, launched its activity in some counties of the Volyn province (Kovel, Volodymyr-Volynskyi, and partly Lutsk). When the region came under the Austrian occupation in late 1915, this organization's main concern was the Ukrainian school system development. The Galician Bureau of Cultural Aid, together with the teachers and the Sich Riflemen who appeared in Volyn at that time, made a significant contribution to the national consciousness growth and improvement of the educational level of the local population.
The largest educational centers in Volyn were the cities of Lutsk, Kovel, and Volodymyr-Volynskyi. In 1916, with the permission of the Austrian authorities, a Ukrainian four-grade public school was founded in Volodymyr-Volynskyi and located in the building of a former church-parish school. Most of the students at the school were children from local Jewish families, owing to the city's ethnic composition and the evacuation process in the early stage of the war.
That same year, the school in Ustyluh began its work, with 158 students (100 Ukrainians, 54 Jews, and 4 Germans), as of December 5. One of the Ustyluh school reports stated that the educational institution was located in a "cramped Jewish house" because larger premises were "seized by the Poles". The world-famous Ukrainian composer and conductor Ihor Stravinsky, who regularly came to Ustyluh for the summertime before the First World War, called this town a true paradise for his work and inspiration.
Ultimately, in May of 1916, the Ukrainian school in Lutsk was opened, with 100 students of Ukrainian nationality. The local magistrate, where the Poles dominated, postponed its opening very long. About 300 Jewish students also applied for studying at it, but Colonel Urbanski, the head of the Lutsk magistrate, forbade them to enroll. The prohibition on the education of Jews in Ukrainian schools was connected probably with the desire of Poles to integrate them into Polish-German schools.
At the beginning of November 1916, students of Matseiv in the Kovel region began to study in the Ukrainian school. The number of students was about 135–140 people. In June of the same year, there was only a Jewish school and a Polish school in Kovel and no Ukrainian school in the town due to the small number of students of Ukrainian nationality. Since July 1916, the Ukrainian school in Liuboml had worked actively. In 1917, to raise funds for the needs of children who lost their parents in the war, the teaching staff staged an amateur performance based on the dramatic work Natalka Poltavka by Ivan Kotlyarevsky.
In contrast to the cities, the Ukrainian population predominated in the villages of Volyn, so the Sich riflemen had a lot of work to organize schools there. For example, on April 7, 1916, teacher Mykhailo Taranko informed Ivan Krypiakevych about opening a Ukrainian school in the village of Teremno in Lutsk County and asked to send them several portraits of Taras Shevchenko, Franz JosephI, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, and a map of the Ukrainian lands. In 1917, one of the school teachers of the Liuboml region wrote: “Children are very happy to go to school and are particularly interested in the history of their ancestors. Adults are also willing to enroll in school to learn their native language".
On the whole, according to various estimations, the Ukrainian Sich riflemen opened 150–250 Ukrainian schools in Volyn during 1916–1918. The development of education during the First World War led to the unprecedented growth in national consciousness of the Ukrainians, whom the imperial authorities tried to russify for more than a hundred years. The process of establishing Ukrainian schools in Volyn strengthened in 1918–1919, during the time of the Ukrainian Central Rada, the Ukrainian Statehood formation, and the Directory of the Ukrainian People's Republic. In the academic year 1919–1920, there were 367 such institutions.
The Polish community of the region, which had always competed with the local Ukrainian population in the education sphere, carried out the intensive educational activity during the First World War. In 1916, the Polish Mother-School society started its activities in Volyn, having established a network of Enlightenment centers. Within the territories controlled by the Russian troops, this structure functioned as the Polish Mother-School in Rus. As to the Volodymyr-Volynskyi and Kovel counties, which were under Austrian occupation, the activities were carried out by the society branch Mother-School in Volyn. It was headed by Tadeusz Krzyzanowski. Both organizations emerged synchronously and independently and worked in the same direction, aiming at supporting the dissemination of Polish education and culture.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Riga in 1921, the western part of Volyn became a part of the Second Commonwealth as Volyn Voivodeship, with its center in Lutsk. In terms of the educational level of population, it was one of the most backward regions in the country. According to the census data of 1921, 75% of the region's population was illiterate, without even an elementary education level. In rural areas, the illiteracy rate was twice as high as in urban ones. Given that more than 70% of Voivodship's population was Ukrainians, the problem of Ukrainian schooling development was particularly acute.
In May of 1922, a curatorial office (department) of the Volyn school district was established in Lutsk to solve educational problems. Soon it moved to Rivne. The 628 schools of those functioning in Volyn at that time came under this department's jurisdiction. In 395 schools, the learning process was provided in Polish, while in 233 schools, it was in Ukrainian. In Lutsk, with about 29,000 people inhabiting it in the first half of the 1920s, there were nine comprehensive and vocational primary schools (two Polish, two Ukrainian, two Polish vocational (male and female), and three Jewish schools), where 66 teachers taught and 2 299 pupils studied.
One of the first orders issued by the Volyn school district curator was a circular obliging all teachers to obtain/get Polish citizenship within two months. Otherwise, they could be fired. Consequently, many Ukrainian teachers lost their jobs due to the inability to obtain Polish citizenship. At the end of 1922, the schools in Volyn employed 1,300 Poles and almost half as many Ukrainians. Regardless of the shortage of qualified teachers, in the 1920s, the authorities closed Ukrainian teachers' training seminaries (two for men (in Dederkaly and Derman) and one for women (in Zymne). The seminaries trained teachers for schools where learning was in Ukrainian.
Even more negative changes in the education of Ukrainians in Volyn Voivodeship happened in 1924 when the Law on Schooling, known as Lex Grabski, was adopted. It determined the organizational principles of schooling for national minorities in the eastern Voivodships of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until the end of the two interwar decades. The Law allowed only one type of state school in the territories with a mixed ethnic composition of the population, and it was the Polish school. The right to open Ukrainian public primary schools was granted to those communities where Ukrainians accounted for 25% of residents or more. Besides, parents of 40% of school-age children had to submit a special declaration, officially confirmed by the authorities. However, the law stated that if in a school district, in addition to parents who expressed a desire to teach their children in their native language, there were at least 20 children whose parents wanted their children to be educated in Polish, the school could be bilingual (half of the subjects taught in Polish and the other half in the Ukrainian language).
The Law implementation in the Volyn district led to the closure of 301 schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction in the 1925–1926 academic year. But the number of bilingual educational institutions increased from 93 to 366 schools. There were no Ukrainian-language public primary schools left in the region, and the number of Ukrainian private schools had dropped to seven. In the Utraquist schools, Poles made up 9.5% of the total number of students, and 88.2% were Ukrainians.
After the May coup of 1926, the "new approach of the government" to solving the Ukrainian problem at the regional level was the appointment of Henryk Juzewski as Volyn voivode. He supported the idea of opening Polish schools with the Ukrainian language as a compulsory subject. According to the government educational policy, this type of school corresponded fully to the concept of the so-called state education established in the school education system after 1926. In the period from 1928 to1938, the number of such schools in Volyn increased (it doubled from 348 to 853), and the number of bilingual schools decreased from 417 to 520. There were only eight schools with Ukrainian as a basic language of instruction in1937–1938 academic year.
In the period between the1920s–1930s, there were three secondary education institutions in Lutsk: the Tadeusz Kosciuszko State Gymnasium (founded in autumn of 1917, it functioned as a state gymnasium with the Polish language of instruction since 1921), the Hugo Kollontai Private Teachers' Training Seminary (founded in February 1924, it trained teachers for junior secondary and primary schools), and a Private Ukrainian Gymnasium, founded by the Society named after Lesya Ukrainka.
The Ukrainian Gymnasium in Lutsk was founded on the basis of the former Russian State Gymnasium for Men. At the end of 1919, it lost its status as a state institution and experienced financial difficulties. In addition, it was necessary to have a special permit (concession) for the right to open a gymnasium, which required renewal every year. The first concessionaire was the director of the gymnasium Ivan Vlasovskyi. In 1921, the Prosvita cultural and educational society took the Ukrainian gymnasium in Lutsk under its protection. This year, owing to the efforts of the Society, the gymnasium had got the status of a Private Ukrainian Gymnasium for males and was maintained at the expense of parents and benefactors. In the late 1920s, the concession for the Ukrainian gymnasium was granted to the Lesya Ukrainka Society.
From 1931 to the autumn of 1939, the educational institution functioned as the Lutsk Private Ukrainian Gymnasium under the Lesya Ukrainka Society’s protection. The total number of students could not exceed 250 people. The limit on the number of students was set by the authorities. The students came mainly from the Ukrainian families living on the outskirts of Lutsk. Children aged 12–16, when they successfully passed entrance exams, were admitted to study. All subjects, except History, Geography, and Polish, were taught in Ukrainian. After four grades in the gymnasium, the students continued their studies for two years more in two groups of the lyceum that operated at the gymnasium.
The teaching staff of the institution consisted of 12-14 highly-qualified teachers. One of them were Ivan Vlasovskyi, who occupied a position of the director of the gymnasium from 1918–to 1926 and was a teacher of Ukrainian and Philosophy, and an active participant in the church-religious life of Volyn in the inter-war period, V. Fedorenko, a specialist in Latin and History of the Ancient World, R. Shkliar, the director of the gymnasium from 1926–to 1929 and a teacher of the Ukrainian language and History, and B. Biletskyi, the director of the gymnasium from 1929–to 1939.
The Hugo Kollontai Teachers' Training Seminary was a separate professional education institution in Lutsk. It started its activities in February of 1924. The initiative of opening it belonged to the Society of Teachers of Secondary and Higher Education. This initially mixed-type private institution trained teachers for incomplete secondary and primary schools. In the early 1920s, the seminary did not have sufficient funding and was in danger of closing down. In 1929, it was granted the rights of a state educational institution and financial support from the Ministry of Religion and Public Education. In the 1930-1931academic year, there studied 214 people (116 Poles, 30 Ukrainians, 20 Russians, 13 Czechs, two Germans, and 33 Jews). At the seminary, there were teacher refresher courses, where about one hundred teachers improved their professional skills annually.
In 1921, Kremenets Lyceum resumed its activities and was subordinated to the Ministry of Education. The educational complex included not only a gymnasium but also the teachers' training seminary, the vocational education institutions of agricultural and craft-industrial orientation, some preschool institutions for children, etc. At the end of the 1930s, the Kremenets Regional Museum and the Volyn Scientific Research Institute carried out their activities at the Kremenets Lyceum.
In the interwar period, in addition to the Polish and Ukrainian educational institutions in Volyn, there were also institutions established by the Jewish, Czech, Russian, and German communities. The outbreak of World War II in September of 1939 interrupted all those institutions' successful development.