Expertise

Let's return kindergartens to children!

Director of the Institute for the Development of Education at the State University - Higher School of Economics Irina Abankina: - If Russia recognizes preschool education as the level of general education, the subjects of the Federation will need 238 billion rubles, ...

Director of the Institute for Education Development of the State University – Higher School of Economics Irina Abankina:

- If Russia recognizes pre-school education as a level of general education, the subjects of the Federation will need 238 billion rubles to make it publicly available.

Children in kindergartens are more expensive than in school. Parents by law cannot pay more than 20% of the cost of maintaining children. In reality, this fee is lower in the regions: there are both 13 and 17%. At the same time, the proportion of non-working mothers who take their children to kindergarten for the whole day is very high. But in the new law on education, we are changing our position: a preschool institution is not a left-luggage office where mothers can take their children to go to work. It is a form of early development, a stage of education, and we must ensure that it is available whether the mother is working or not.

The remark of the Ministry of Education and Science that the department is ready to deal with children's education, but will not deal with children's pots, is initially incorrect. To teach a child to use the potty is another important educational project! Many of us are spoiled by kindergarten for life, because we endured to the last and were embarrassed to ask for this same potty. In the same way, the ability to eat in a team is also education.

It is important to study the experience of municipalities. I very much welcome the experience of Moscow in attracting mothers of many children to the creation of family groups. Mothers receive qualifications, salaries, seniority, maternity payments. Such a group is opened, starting with three preschool children. If the elder leaves for school, the mother takes another baby, for example, from a neighboring apartment.

Was on a business trip in Yakutia. I saw how a kindergarten is being built in the village with all communications using the folk construction method. The region, the municipality, businesses and residents are helping.

In Togliatti last year, VAZ handed over to the municipality its kindergartens - 48 buildings, 3 thousand employees. What's next? If the gardens are financed according to the city standard, then it will be necessary to close the swimming pools and sports complexes operating under them. How to maintain quality and variety? There are many questions. Answers are to be found.

Deputy request

Deputy of the State Duma, Deputy Chairman of the Education Committee Oleg Smolin:

— The defeat of preschool education is associated with the changes of the early 1990s. In the heat of revolutionary denial, the opinion was established in society that kindergartens are the same collective farms, and every mother will prepare a child for school better than in a kindergarten. In the 1990s, most of the kindergartens were distributed to state institutions or sold to commercial structures. The number of children passing through kindergartens fell by about half.

Since the early 2000s, the birth rate has increased (primarily due to the fact that a large generation has entered childbearing age). In some regions, there was even a baby boom. As a result, now the queue for kindergartens is 1 million 700 thousand people. And it’s not in vain that they say that you need to enroll in a kindergarten not when the child was born, but when it was just conceived.

According to Art. 43 of the Constitution, pre-school education is publicly available and free of charge. But in the current situation, there is no need to talk about any general accessibility. The State Duma adopted some laws that were supposed to help solve the problem. For example, there was a compensation of part of the parental fee for the child's stay in kindergarten. This is right. But in 2010, the operation of Article 43 was suspended, and the Duma has a bill that shifts responsibility for its implementation from the federal level to the regions. If it is adopted, then each subject of the Russian Federation, by virtue of the governor's priorities, will decide whether to help parents keep their child in kindergarten. And if the queue for kindergartens is already slowing down the birth rate, then the new law, if adopted, will slow it down even more.

The suggestions are obvious. It is necessary to implement the 43rd Art. Constitution: to make pre-school education available in Russia, including through the construction of new kindergartens, and by returning to children those rear facilities that were mostly lost in the 90s. In addition, it is necessary to increase compensation to parents. We gave the following amendment: for the first child up to 40% of the parental fee, for the second - 70%, for the third and subsequent - 100%. This will be an incentive for the development of preschool education and for solving the demographic problem. But for this to happen, other state priorities are needed. So far, according to economist Oksana Dmitrieva, a member of the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes, 85% of government spending on the Russian anti-crisis program has gone to the oligarchs - big business and banks.

We are preparing an alternative law on education, which includes these provisions.