Exception to the Rule

The State Duma stood up for poor students

From now on, it will be very difficult for secondary school principals to get rid of a bully and a poor student and kick him out. At the end of last week, the State Duma adopted in the first reading amendments to the law “On Education”, defining the procedure for expelling high school students for malicious violations of discipline from general education institutions. Among the initiators of the bill are traditionalists belonging to different factions. Among them are Ekaterina Lakhova (United Russia), Nina Ostanina (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), Elena Afanasyeva (LDPR).

By and large, the authors of the amendments are going to assign to the school the functions of education and control that were lost in the turbulent 90s. Despite the fact that the authors explain their initiative by “strengthening the protection of the rights of minors to receive an education,” the main reason, apparently, is that unsupervised teenagers pose a real threat to public safety. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, which Ms. Afanasyeva announced at the chamber meeting, over the six months of this year, 580 thousand minors were detained for various offenses. Of these, 130 thousand do not study anywhere, and more than 24 thousand have never studied at all.

The document, approved by the State Duma, proposes to increase the age of a schoolchild who can be expelled from a general education institution from 14 to 15 years. And the school itself has the right to make a decision on expulsion only if “the student has committed illegal actions that disrupt the work of the educational institution, and has also repeatedly intentionally grossly violated the charter of this institution.” In addition, in accordance with the bill, the decision to expel a high school student should be made not only by the teachers' committee and the local education authority. To do this, it will now be necessary to obtain the consent of the parents (legal representatives of the teenager) and, necessarily, the commission on juvenile affairs. If, after receiving all the “approvals,” the hooligan or poor student still manages to be expelled, this commission, together with the parents and the local education authority, will be obliged not only to “register him,” but also to employ the teenager within a month or assign him to “ continuing to master the educational program in a different form of education.”

The amendments formulated in this way are another step towards compulsory 11-year education, which the head of the relevant ministry Andrei Fursenko has been constantly talking about lately. Apparently, the 11-year school will become compulsory primarily for young Muscovites - the corresponding law was adopted by the Moscow City Duma in the first reading in September. However, the capital's deputies are trying to maintain a balance of interests not only of parents, who want a certificate for their child, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is seeking to reduce child crime, but also of teachers, who will either have to come to terms with the presence of poor students and hooligans, or look for sophisticated ways to get rid of them. Therefore, work on the final text of the law is still ongoing.

Irina BELASHEVA