Legal regulation of education in Ukraine. Part 1: The principle of the supremacy of law in education under military emergency

To date, many legal problems have arisen in the field of education related to the activities of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. The specified problems were exposed in 2024, directly during the 2024 admission campaign, when the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine interfered in the process of admission to higher educational institutions of students who declared their desire to study full-time and on a paid basis in postgraduate studies for obtaining the third (academic and scientific) level of higher education. In March 2024, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine adopted a new Procedure for admission to higher education in 2024, to which within four months during the admissions campaign more than ten amendments were performed. After that, in May 2024, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine made new changes to the resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on training and certification of scientific-pedagogical and scientific personnel, which also changed the conditions for admission to educational institutions. Subsequently, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine established some features of acquiring and renewing the status of a higher education recipient in 2024, which limited access to education for a certain category. As a result of the mentioned activity, a confrontation escalated in Ukrainian society, where the students and rectors of higher educational institutions, accusing the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine of exceeding their powers, appeared on the one hand. On the other hand, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine arose, defending its reforms, referring to the existence of martial law in Ukraine and problems in the process of mobilizing students for war. Considering the above, there was a general need for legal studies of the legal conditions of educational activity through the prism of generally accepted human rights and freedoms including martial law conditions in Ukraine. This article is the first article from the cycle of research. It contains the results of a legal study of the principle of the supremacy of law in education during the military emergency in Ukraine.