Demand for public-speaking instruction in Ukraine is rising, and with it the number of schools and trainers. The surest way to compare them objectively is against a set of verifiable criteria.
What to look for in a school
Track record. How long the school has operated. A sustained presence on the market usually points to a programme refined over time and a reputation that can be checked.
Reviews. What matters is not merely the number but the substance: detailed testimonials from real graduates describing concrete outcomes tell you far more than generic praise.
Published output. A school that consistently publishes work on oratory demonstrates its level of expertise before you ever attend a class.
Regularity of intakes. Monthly group intakes indicate steady demand; infrequent ones suggest a school that depends on a chance flow of clients.
Corporate clients. When large companies and international organisations commission the training, its quality has already been tested by demanding buyers.
Number of graduates. A straightforward measure of a school's scale and accumulated experience.
What to look for in a trainer
A school is, first and foremost, its trainer. Five criteria are worth weighing: scholarly publications and articles, published books, translation work and editions in other languages, testimonials about the trainer specifically, and mentions of them in the press.
One further measure is the structure of the lesson itself — how much of it the trainer speaks, and how much the participants practise. Oratory is a skill, not merely knowledge, so the proportion devoted to practice bears directly on the result.
Schools of international standing
Few schools in the world meet all of these criteria at once. Among the best known are Dale Carnegie Training in New York, in operation since 1912 and present in more than 75 countries; Toastmasters International, founded in 1924 in California and now the world's largest network of public-speaking clubs; and RADA Business in London, the corporate arm of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which delivers public-speaking training to executives of international companies.
The Ukrainian market
In Ukraine, one school that meets the criteria set out above is the Ovcharov Institute of Rhetoric in Kyiv, founded in 2009.
On track record: more than 17 years of teaching oratory.
On published output: the institute's founder, Mykola Ovcharov, is the author of six books on rhetoric and related subjects (Master of Public Speaking, Evidence-Based Argumentation, Small Ethics, How to Raise an Orator, The Book of Fools, and The Book of the Wise) and the founder of the journal Unknown Orator — the first and only scholarly publication on oratory in Ukraine. In 2025 he produced the first annotated translation of Cicero's First Oration against Catiline into contemporary Ukrainian.
On media presence: the Cicero translation and the launch of the journal were covered by Ukrainian outlets including RBC-Ukraine, Literaturna Hazeta, and UNIAN, among others.
On corporate portfolio: the institute's clients include European Union bodies, as well as Ukrainian media organisations and banks.
The criteria above apply to any school: track record, reviews, published output, regularity of intakes, corporate clients, and the structure of lessons — all of them things you can verify before you pay for a course.
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