Crisis in our heads

Participants of the First All-Russian Pedagogical Forum, held in St. Petersburg on July 28, 2009, sent a resolution to the country's top leadership. The text of the resolution was published on the website “Zavuch.info”.

One of the main reasons for teachers’ dissatisfaction is the so-called “optimization” of state spending on education carried out by the Ministry of Education. “It is apparently assumed that the education system should become a kind of “factory” for churning out personnel for the needs of “New Russia,” the text of the resolution says.

Teachers claim that “the implemented “economic” model of education management leads to an actual reduction in the guarantees of access to free education for citizens.” The result of cost optimization, as reported in the resolution, is “a significant reduction in the number of secondary educational institutions in small towns and rural areas, an almost complete reduction in the staff of “non-educational” specialists (psychologists, social workers, educators), an increase in the teaching load on teachers and children and, as the consequence is a reduction in time for preparing for lessons, limiting the possibility of additional work for teachers with students.”

“Incomplete classes” are being eliminated, and in “monster classes,” as teachers call classes with too many students, it is impossible to organize quality education, and teachers have to work in two or more positions “to ensure the minimum level of salary necessary for life.” .

For the sake of the notorious optimization, the heads of educational institutions have to save on planned repairs (“to the detriment of children’s health”), involve parents in solving financial problems (“which causes their completely justified irritation when from TV screens at the same time they repeat about the constitutional right to free education and bribe-taking teachers"). As a result, the prestige of teaching is undermined and, in general, a hostile attitude of parents and children towards the school is built, the authors of the resolution claim. “Under such conditions, it is impossible to talk about quality education for schoolchildren,” they say.

The second major problem, or rather the strategic mistake of Russian education, according to teachers, is “an attempt to transfer to the realities of the Russian traditional system of education and training individual models of educational technologies adopted in the West,” and more specifically, the Unified State Exam, which is already in the minds of many. “The endless series of “experiments” that have overwhelmed the Russian education system recently have led to the almost complete collapse of the education system that has been built over decades,” the authors of the resolution claim.

The essence of this big problem is that the educational element is lost in the work of the school, and instead there is a “stamping” of students “able to answer the questions of a test created by no one knows who and for what.” The goal of training is the ability to correctly answer Unified State Exam questions. “The pursuit of “points” in the Unified State Examination Certificate and the actual refusal of the Certificate of Maturity turns our graduates into people with their heads empty of real knowledge,” the text says. — The lack of control over educational planning at the regional and local level leads to an imbalance in the level of knowledge of students in different regions of Russia. “Innovative” subjects that appear or are excluded from the program bring confusion to the educational process. Textbooks and teaching aids that receive the stamp “Recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation” often do not stand up to criticism from practicing teachers and parents.”

A separate reason for teachers’ dissatisfaction is the introduction in a number of regions of Russia of the so-called “Spiritual and Moral Education” program, “adopted by the country’s leadership without public discussion with parents and any public discussion with the professional teaching community.” ". We consider this not only an unconstitutional act from a formal point of view, but also a short-sighted step. We believe that decisions of this kind cannot be made behind the scenes or simply “at the request of the workers.” “Experiments” and “pilot implementations” are unacceptable in this area, since we are talking about the spiritual education of children. Therefore, we propose to abandon the “experimental implementation” and insist on holding a serious discussion of the proposed “innovations” in the professional environment,” the teachers say.

The forum participants, however, did not limit themselves to pointing out problems and sounding the alarm bell: the resolution includes a set of seven-point proposals to the country’s leadership. Firstly, it is proposed to “develop and submit for public discussion a Strategy for the Development of the Russian Education System for the period up to 2025, which will define the basis for the formation of educational standards - the image of a Russian school graduate capable of competing in terms of knowledge with graduates of educational institutions of the leading world powers. Russia today needs a clear idea of ​​the goals of its educational strategy, and not endless patching of individual holes on the road leading to nowhere.”

Secondly, according to teachers, it is necessary to “abandon the ideology of “economic feasibility” in the educational policy of the Russian Federation and provide citizens with constitutional guarantees of access to education throughout Russia through the implementation of the corresponding National Program “Affordable and Quality Education.”

Thirdly, all (teachers especially insist on this) current ongoing and planned projects in the field of education from the standpoint of professional assessment of the teaching community should be reconsidered, for which “a transparent and public procedure for independent professional examination of all strategically significant projects and legislative initiatives should be organized.”

Fourthly, it is necessary to revise the law on the Unified State Exam and introduce a two-stage system, in which one part is the final exam for obtaining a certificate, and the second is the entrance exam to a university or secondary vocational educational institution. “At the same time, bring the regulations for the Unified State Examination into compliance with sanitary standards regarding the time allocated for students’ work.” In addition, it is necessary to “introduce a procedure for strict control over the content of Unified State Exam question databases to ensure their compliance with state standards, recommended curricula and educational literature for use.” A very valuable point is “to abandon the practice of lowering the final score on appeal.” An important point is “to introduce strict requirements for the timing of publication of demo versions of the Unified State Exam: they must be published no later than October 1 in the academic year to which they relate.”

Fifthly, teachers propose “to abandon the Model methods of per capita financing of educational institutions and the formation of wages for employees of educational institutions currently being implemented by the Ministry of Education as unacceptable,” and to organize an interregional working group to develop a new financing model. As a result, the education sector should receive “a uniform and guaranteed level of minimum wage for teaching staff for all subjects of the Russian Federation”, “standards for financing educational institutions in terms of their economic activities, related to the type of institution and the presence of actual property, buildings, structures on its balance sheet and land plots,” “additional subventions to the regions to support rural and small schools, as well as separately for support programs for young teachers.”

Sixth, instead of laying off teachers themselves, it is necessary to cut back managers and methodologists, and if an educational institution is being cut down, then it is imperative to cut down the staff of the education department and the methodological service at the appropriate level. In addition, in order to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of teachers, it is necessary, according to the authors of the resolution, to limit the number of reports that they have to write, and not to involve teachers in any non-core work, so that they do not replace “the school’s economic worker, social service worker or the children's room of the police."

Finally, seventhly, it is necessary to “develop and propose for consideration by the relevant commissions of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation draft amendments and additions to the regulatory documents governing state policy in the field of mass communications and the media, in order to organize the influence of the public and the professional educational community on state media for eliminating the imbalance in the actions of the state educational system and the media in terms of the formation of a moral and cultural civil society in Russia.”