How the White Governor boasted about his education

The other day, at a meeting of the Government of the Russian Federation dedicated to education issues, D.A. Medvedev and the ministers heard, among others, the governor of the Kirov region.

Belykh noted that “in terms of the level of secondary education, the Kirov region is one of the leaders of the Russian Federation,” which, in his opinion, is confirmed by the average Unified State Examination score, the number of medalists, the number of winners and prize-winners of all-Russian and international Olympiads. I agree, these are significant achievements. However, I note that the level of education is also the degree of satisfaction of parents, students, and teachers with its quality. Not only those who ended up in prestigious educational institutions favored by the authorities, but also in some school number ... eleven, in the regional center, in the rural outback. Students with 100 points and winners of international Olympiads, as a rule, will join the capital’s universities and will never return to the Kirov region. But what about the huge mass of graduates who score 50-70 points on the Unified State Exam, then go on to become engineers and agronomists, go to factories and defend their homeland, master the professions of doctors and cooks and simply want to live normally in their native land, create families, take care of parents? Do they like the wretched conditions that have been created for them in their villages, towns and working-class outskirts? Isn’t the depressing assessment by the majority of teachers of the current state of the school a factor that should be taken into account in the policy being pursued? But I’ve already forgotten when we (teachers and parents) were asked about something.

Among the most significant effects of his rule, Belykh names a significant increase in teachers’ salaries: “If at the beginning of 2011 in the Kirov region (it) amounted to just over 9 thousand rubles, then by December 2012 this figure exceeded 19 thousand rubles.” True, the governor modestly omitted the fact that in December the regional government, bypassing the law on normative per capita financing for material incentives for teachers, allocated each institution an additional approximately 10% of the monthly payroll for this category of workers. They can do it whenever they want! However, I won’t be ironic; the upward trend in wages is, of course, encouraging. The individual sources of this increase are not entirely encouraging. First of all, extreme intensification of labor. With a salary of 4,700 (from January 1 - 5,300), teachers are forced to teach one and a half to two rates, class management, carry out many additional tasks - develop volumes of work programs, be educators in forcibly imposed school "health camps" in the absence of any base, repair their offices, etc. To get a bonus, they are forced to tumble and dance at various competitions, to resort to tricks in order to get prizes. In addition, the law on regulatory financing provides for the allocation of funds for both wages and educational expenses (textbooks, computers, furniture). However, it allows for the free redistribution of funds from one item to another. I assume that this was initially done with the goal that the “condemned” small schools could pay at least some wages, avoiding acute labor conflicts, as if on their own (in fact, in a hopeless situation) depriving themselves of spending on visual aids and modern equipment . This was the Jesuit way of getting rid of unwanted people - bringing them to a humiliating stage of poverty, so that the parents would take the children and transfer them to a better place, and the employees would run away. Now the number of schools in which educational expenses go entirely to salaries has increased significantly. This is a promotion in Vyatka style.

The government was partially successful in its campaign to disperse schools and teachers. Otherwise, the problem with teaching staff, mentioned by the governor as a primary one, would not have arisen. There are hundreds of vacancies in the region, with thousands ahead. The words of Nikita Yuryevich sound like crocodile tears: “We are doing everything in our power within the framework of our powers. At the regional level, we have developed a systematic approach to attracting young specialists to the industry...”. Several generations of graduates of a pedagogical university simply did not come to school - where people were oppressed with meager salaries, unreasonable demands, without giving anything in return. They did not come to replace those who were abandoned along with hundreds of closed schools. They did not patiently listen to complaints about “they teach poorly”, having only chalk and a rag and a bunch of material and everyday problems that are of no interest to anyone. And at the same time, the governor also complained about the dominance of pensioners in schools. Yes, if it weren’t for these Soviet-trained pensioners, schools would already have deserted corridors. Today I hired a young specialist. For three months, the girl traveled 40 kilometers on regular buses with two transfers, got up at five in the morning, came back at six in the evening, then prepared her homework and checked her notebooks. Finally, I begged: I can’t. You can’t buy housing, no one rents it out, there is no service fund. We found some old house in a half-abandoned village, there was rubbish all around, the water supply was frozen, the stove was smoking, we were put in in thirty-degree frost, the first night I slept in a hat. And Belykh is talking about helping such specialists, about scholarships, about a systematic approach...

In his repertoire, the governor identified small schools as the “main problem”: “If we need 120-140 full-fledged schools, we have 600 of them: we have 80% of small schools. We have examples when the number of teachers in a school is greater than the number of students.” . I forgive him everything, even the renaming of Kirov to Vyatka, but not the small schools that he destroyed tirelessly. I saw a school that was closed by the fire inspectorate at the reception in July, and teachers and parents in August, without any outside help, equipped it on the 2nd floor of the kindergarten building. For the sake of their jobs and their twenty-five children. After which the director was also tried for violating fire safety standards and given a fine. I saw a school that still has a sign about its opening in 1942, the most difficult year of the Great Patriotic War. For the sake of the children, when there was no confidence in victory. And they closed it under Nikita Yuryevich in the year when they sang about the fantastic plan “2020”. Like dozens of others. Those who survive hate it. My grandmother, after working on a collective farm for half a century, received a 12-ruble pension from the Soviet government for her workdays. The current maintenance of small schools is comparable to this handout.

"...We will ensure the operation of these schools as long as there is a need for them. But it is also necessary to maintain the appropriate quality of education in rural schools." Is it possible to challenge the idea expressed by the governor of “creating a new model of the education system that allows every person to receive a high-quality and affordable education at any level, regardless of health status and place of residence”? Everything is so, only from these lips the promise of a sled ride down the hill comes when we are dragged on a cart into a swampy, stinking swamp in the summer.