The plans of the Ukrainian Education and Science Ministry to introduce the study of Russian at schools as a second foreign language is another manipulation of public opinion, the head of the parliamentary committee on science and education, Lilia Hrynevych, has said.

"Knowledge of foreign languages is an integral part of modern education. However, the planned introduction of a second foreign language is another manipulation of public opinion," she said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine in Kyiv on Monday.

Hrynevych said that ministry had not created any conditions for the qualitative study of a second foreign language.

"As a result, at lessons, instead of a second foreign language, children will learn a language they know well, since Russian is the mother tongue for some children and for other children it is a language of daily communication," she said.

She said that that hundreds of thousands of children are not really learning a second foreign language.

"The ministry is actually narrowing, rather than widening the starting opportunities in life for these children," she said.

Hrynevych said she was confident that the introduction of a second foreign language at schools should start with the creation of the proper conditions, first and foremost, with supporting the social status of the teacher and publishing the required number of textbooks.

"Today the salary of a young foreign language teacher is slightly higher than that of a technical school employee. The young teacher doesn't want to go to work at school, because on the labor market, just by doing translations, he can easily find better offers," Hrynevych said.