Taste of Grant

Schools begin to share money from the national project

The national project "Education" has entered a stage that is not at all interesting to students, but is very exciting for school principals - the final stage of the struggle for grants. Following the general payments to class teachers, the Ministry of Education and Science came to the most intriguing plot of the project - summing up the first competitive results. At the end of last week, the names of 17 universities that will receive from 400 million to 1 billion rubles became known. from the federal treasury for the implementation of its innovative educational programs. Next up is the announcement of the winners of the competition for the best Russian schools implementing innovative educational programs. Regions must submit a list of their winners to the Federal Ministry of Education and Science no later than June 15. And two weeks ago, the rules of the competition for monetary incentives for the best teachers were approved. No later than August 20, the corresponding regional lists of winners will be sent to the Ministry of Education so that 10 thousand teachers in the country will receive 100 thousand rubles for Teacher’s Day.

According to representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, such a generous step by the federal government, as well as regional and municipal authorities investing additional funds in the program, is not just grant support for the best of the best. It is aimed at a qualitative restructuring of the entire education system. It is obvious that the success of such an ambitious project as a whole will be fairly assessed no earlier than in a few years. However, one cannot help but notice that issues of the quality of education, at least in secondary schools, have now faded into the background and have been placed behind financial and organizational ones. Whether the current education reformers wanted it or not, they had to follow the commandment of the times of ex-Minister of Education Vladimir Filippov: “First provide the material base, then demand quality work from teachers.”

When reporting to journalists on the implementation of the educational national project, representatives of Russian regions are always very willing to provide figures on the number of computers transferred to schools, square meters of improved classrooms and increases in teachers’ incomes. But, as a rule, they do not talk about the fact that children began to gain more knowledge. In turn, representatives of the relevant federal ministry are increasingly less likely to remember imperfect educational standards.

The participants in the educational process themselves do not always live up to the bright hopes of the authorities. For example, the Ministry of Education recommended that regional competition commissions evaluate laureates not only by achievements measured in numbers (for example, in grades on the Unified State Exam and the number of medalists), but also by reviews of parents and graduates, the fame and popularity of a school or a specific teacher in their region. “A good and dedicated teacher can work very successfully with children from a social risk group, without expecting that all of his students will not only be winners at all-Russian or regional Olympiads, but even good at them. This is necessary and complex work that must be evaluated,” members of the competition commission for schools in the Chelyabinsk region convinced the Vremya Novostey correspondent. However, as it turned out, many old, honored teachers refused to nominate themselves for the all-Russian competition. Some are not good at new methods, some considered themselves too respectable to prove their pedagogical worth to unfamiliar officials, and some were embarrassed to lose and not live up to their reputation.

A similar picture emerged with schools. Many schools considered local educational leaders did not apply for presidential grants. In this case, the stumbling block was the need to draw up a development program and introduce modern techniques.

Kirill VASILENKO