| Capital schoolchildren will be spared evening classes In the capital's schools, soon only the first shift will remain. The authorities' intention to spare schoolchildren from evening classes was confirmed yesterday at a meeting of the city pedagogical council by the first deputy mayor of the capital, Lyudmila Shvetsova. “Not so long ago, Yuri Luzhkov ordered the development of measures to completely abandon evening education and the so-called second shift in secondary schools,” she explained. According to Ms. Shvetsova, the number of children who study in the second shift today is not so significant - no more than 3% of 900 thousand Moscow schoolchildren. Therefore, the authorities expect to eradicate this practice, left over from Soviet times and the demographic boom in the capital of the late 70s, in a short time. “This issue will be completely resolved in the near future,” said the deputy mayor.
The city authorities also promise to solve within two years the rather painful problem for Moscow with the shortage of kindergartens, which appeared, on the contrary, after the demographic failure of the early 90s, when, due to a shortage of groups, many kindergartens and nurseries were closed and their buildings were privatized. Lyudmila Shvetsova complained that since 1990 the city has lost about a thousand kindergartens. “There are now 1,822 state kindergartens and 172 departmental kindergartens in Moscow,” she said. -- 627 kindergartens have been repurposed in the last ten years. Over the past five years, the city has managed to return 21 kindergartens. This, of course, is not enough: there are about 12 thousand children on the waiting list for places in kindergartens.” The deputy mayor promised that small home gardens would soon be created on the first floors of residential buildings, and the city would also take all necessary measures in the future “to prevent the repurposing of kindergartens, for example, into fitness centers.” “Those kindergartens that are about to be repurposed need to be returned to the capital’s education system,” noted Lyudmila Shvetsova.
Demographic issues were raised at the capital's citywide teachers' council by the Minister of Education and Science, Andrei Fursenko, who was invited there. According to him, this year 1 million fewer children will go to Russian schools than last year. The minister, however, admitted that on the school issue, in contrast to Moscow officials, he is concerned about another problem - the huge number of understaffed schools in the regions. “In 5,604 Russian schools today there are only ten students,” complained the head of the Ministry of Education. The problem, in his opinion, “is not only the high cost of maintaining such educational institutions, but also the quality of education itself - it is quite difficult to create normal learning conditions for students of such schools.”
It is noteworthy that the city pedagogical council held yesterday, whose focus traditionally includes only secondary education, also discussed issues of higher education. Andrei Fursenko tried to convince his colleagues that it is not at all necessary to strive for all eleventh-graders to enter universities. “We must explain that entering a university is not the only path to success,” he noted. According to the minister, the state must also offer school graduates other ways to achieve success in life than higher education, otherwise it will deceive society. “By establishing the need for education for everyone, the state stimulates the emergence of offended and unhappy people who have received an education and are faced with the fact that no one needs it. Such people can bring not benefit to society, but even harm,” says Mr. Fursenko.
The minister, who insists on cutting non-core faculties, appears to be clearly concerned about the boom in higher education. This year there were many more applicants than school graduates. “We can say that many did not receive an education at the time, some are receiving a second education, but the fact is obvious,” the minister said. In his opinion, the increased demand for college diplomas may give rise to another wave of pseudo-education and activation of universities, in which it is “more about selling diplomas than about quality education.” Andrei Fursenko recalled that this year the licenses of 23 branches of universities were revoked, the quality of education in which did not meet state standards, and promised to continue audit work in higher education just as intensively.
Finally, the head of the Ministry of Education once again assured teachers that he does not intend to stop the experiment on the unified state exam. “I cannot say that the Ministry of Education is completely satisfied with the way the Unified State Exam is being conducted, but the idea itself - a unified approach to quality - is correct,” he emphasized. “The state has no right to abandon a unified approach to the quality of education, the quality of the education received and the preparation of applicants.” Kirill VASILENKO |
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