Translated material
Day of Ignorance
A mass protest of teachers against education reform took place in Russia
After a long break, Russian teachers reminded the government of their troubles. Yesterday, an all-Russian protest action by teachers, organized by the trade union of workers of public education and science, took place in schools and universities in more than half of the country's regions. In Primorye, over 20 thousand teachers and students joined it. Classes in schools, technical schools and the largest state university in the Far East were suspended for 1-2 hours. In the Altai Republic, according to preliminary estimates, approximately 20 thousand people also took part in the protests, and the work of schools and universities was also suspended. In Novosibirsk, a picket took place at the residence of the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the Siberian Federal District. Pickets of city administration buildings took place in many other cities. The teachers' union of Moscow and the Moscow region organized a rally on the Gorbaty bridge, beloved by miners, near the White House.What distinguished yesterday's action from previous demonstrations of teachers deprived of normal salaries was the clear desire of its organizers to lay a political foundation behind social indignation. The traditional demands for repayment of wage arrears and an increase in salaries were, of course, heard at all teachers' rallies that took place. However, they did not look so clear against the background of the strictly formulated main goal of the action by the trade unions - to achieve the abolition of the main provisions of the government plan for the modernization of education. “The reforms proposed by the Ministry of Education in the field of education may lead to the fact that higher education will mainly become paid, and the number of free competitive places will be reduced to a minimum,” says trade union leader Alexander Yakovlev. Teachers' unions also oppose the GIFO system (state registered financial obligations), according to which money will be transferred to the school after the student enters. According to many teachers, if a school loses equalization in state funding, this will lead to its bankruptcy and then to privatization. At the same time, judging by the speeches made yesterday, the majority of trade union activists, regional educators, and especially ordinary teachers are completely unaware of the content of the government modernization program and are just using slogans kindly provided by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. As a result, what became common to all the rallies scattered across the country was the demand to preserve the old state education system and abandon radical reforms.
Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matvienko had to act as a counter-propagandist. At a meeting yesterday at the White House with leaders of the public education union, she said that the government is doing everything possible to pay off wage arrears, which today have already been reduced by almost ten times compared to previous years. The debt, and, according to the Ministry of Finance, purely technical, now amounts to about 500-600 million rubles in all regions. Ms. Matvienko also promised, on behalf of the government, to submit to the State Duma a proposal to increase wages for public sector employees by 20% as early as September 1 of this year. In addition, during the meeting, the developers of the educational reform tried to explain to the trade union leaders that the government and the teaching community had no differences on such fundamental positions as maintaining universal access to education and preventing the general privatization of educational institutions. The government is also against the privatization of education
The ideologist of educational reform, rector of the State University - Higher School of Economics Yaroslav KUZMINOV commented on the situation with teacher protests to the Vremya Novostei newspaper:
- I believe that the basis of the protest is not political. This is simply a reminder to the government that it has adopted a national education doctrine, which, in particular, contains a promise to increase teachers' salaries to the industry average in three or four years, and university teachers' salaries to double the average.
As for the political demands and accusations that were voiced, on Tuesday at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matvienko, we tried to explain to trade union leaders that the government also opposes the privatization of the education system. The government believes that the level of paid education in our country has exceeded socially acceptable standards, and it is necessary to reduce it in the coming years. Because 49% of those entering universities this year are studying on a paid basis, although only 30% of families can pay for education. And the education modernization program is aimed specifically at increasing the accessibility of education and ensuring guarantees of receiving it regardless of income.
And the responsibility for the fact that the regions do not really understand the essence of the reform, I think, lies with the government and the Ministry of Education, which are completely inadequate in working with the public. But here it is also necessary to take into account that the reform is opposed by groups interested, in particular, in maintaining the current system of admission to universities and having very large finances. But the ministry has rather small information capabilities, and it only has budget money.
The paradox is that the demands put forward by trade unions, say, a 50% increase in wages, which I consider absolutely justified, are unrealizable today. Because it is impossible to raise teachers’ salaries separately from other public sector employees. We need to wait for the transition to those state registered obligations, divorced from the Unified Tariff Schedule, against which the organizers of this action took up arms.