In recent decades, the extracurricular education sector has received new impulses for its development and study. It is due not only to the growing understanding of the potential of extracurricular activities to improve the academic results of children and their personal and social development but also to the attention of researchers, practitioners and policymakers to the so-called skills of the XXI century, the formation and development of which through extracurricular activities is recorded by numerous studies (Eccles & Barber, 1999; Mahoney, Larson & Eccles, 2005; Covay & Carbonaro, 2010), as well as with the spread of the ecosystem approach in education and educational policy (Riggs & Greenberg, 2004; Mahoney et al., 2009), where extracurricular time becomes an important part of gaining educational experience. At the same time, extracurricular activities or extracurricular education are not a generally recognized level of education. They do not have the described approaches to determining the activity itself and the degree of necessary support from the state and society. Of course, extracurricular education falls into the legal field of educational activity. Still, being not mandatory and not guaranteed, it, as the researchers note, becomes a new facet of educational inequality (Kosaretsky & Ivanov, 2020). At the same time, the topic of rights and guarantees at other levels, for example, preschool general vocational, is actively discussed in the literature, fixed and regulated in national and supranational documents (Sylva et al., 2004; McGrath, 2012). 

In the Soviet period, children's out-of-school education was an important and even a significant state project, which was supported by a legislative and regulatory framework that fixed the main parameters of the sector: from accessibility and financing to content and formats (Ivanov, Kupriyanov, & Kosaretsky, 2021). The Soviet system of extracurricular education had no analogues in terms of essential characteristics ensuring broad access and quality of services. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 15 former Soviet republics faced the need to build an independent policy, including in education. Within the framework of a large-scale study of the institutional transformation of the Soviet model of extracurricular education in the countries of the former Soviet Union, the issue of regulation of the national sector in the former Soviet republics and the right of the child to extracurricular education becomes a separate study. 

We have two main research questions – to what extent we can talk about the right to extracurricular education; how the extracurricular education sector is regulated in post-Soviet countries.

The study covers all 15 countries of the former USSR and is included in educational inequality in extracurricular education (Bennett, Lutz, & Jayaram, 2012). At the same time, the peculiarities of the formation and manifestation of inequality in extracurricular education its connection with the structure, regulation, transformation of national sectors of extracurricular education are insufficiently studied. Meanwhile, these studies have a two-sided value, allowing to see a significant, but often hidden part of educational inequality and to use the knowledge gained for a deeper understanding of transitional processes in post-Soviet countries in the context of the tasks of children's development and education (Chankseliani, 2017). Studying the regulation of extracurricular activities becomes vital from the point of view of ensuring the right to education and transforming the social norm of accessible extracurricular education of children in the Soviet period.

This study is the first attempt at a cross-country review and comparison of the regulatory framework of extracurricular education in the post-Soviet space. It can be an essential contribution to the discussion on the institutionalization of extracurricular education and overcoming the risks of inequality in this field of activity.

We tried to look at how extracurricular education is fixed and regulated at the level of national legislation in 15 countries of the former Soviet Union. We also tried to outline the "normative context", starting from extracurricular education in the "right to education" enshrined in international law, the activities of supranational structures, the consolidation of the right to extracurricular education in constitutions. The second question is how the right to extracurricular education is formulated in the context of children's rights (in relevant legislative acts) and how it is implemented in these countries. The same focus on regulating extracurricular education is done through the prism of guarantees and rights. We also studied the place of extracurricular education in the strategic documents for the development of the education system. We also attempted to cluster countries with similar legal regulations and a similar focus on developing the extracurricular education system.

We found that an analysis of international law shows that the "right to education" does not include an implicit right to extracurricular education. States do not undertake obligations to create an all-inclusive system of extracurricular education due to differences in financial and political opportunities. Extracurricular education is not fixed in the constitutional documents of post-Soviet countries among the unconditional rights or guarantees of the child. The Constitutions of post-Soviet countries enshrine such rights as physical development, rest and wellness, intellectual and mental development, and leisure. Due to the specifics of extracurricular education fit in with the rights to individual development options: the right to self-realization, creativity, physical health, so if there is no "separate" right, then it can be "assembled" from other rights. There are two main approaches to understanding extracurricular education in the legislation of post-Soviet countries. The first approach links such education as a particular type of educational program. This approach prevails in post-Soviet countries. The second approach distinguishes between formal and other education, including additional education (conditionally classifying all extracurricular education as "non-formal education"). This approach is inherent in Uzbekistan and the Baltic countries as the influence of the EU authorities. Azerbaijan is singled out separately, in respect of which it is possible to put forward a hypothesis about the combination of the above approaches. Specialized organizations in the field of culture and sports (art and music and sports schools) similar to those in the USSR continue to operate, but their legal regulation remains special. The types of organization and approaches to the regulation of extracurricular education in post-Soviet countries, despite some differences, are relatively unified; strategic guidelines often coincide. The exception is the Baltic countries, which are developing in the vector of the standard educational policy of the European Union.

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