Not only the children of oligarchs, but also gifted and special needs children now have hope for better private schools.
In Tyumen on February 26, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin conducted a meeting that was part of his educational initiative Our New School. He spoke about rural schools, teacher's salaries, and ushering in new educational standards. Somewhat less predictably, the prime minister said that the regions must support the growth of private schools. "Many of them offer quality education and, most importantly, accommodate the special needs of children who for various reasons find it hard to adapt to standard municipal schools," Mr Putin said. He urged the heads of the Russian regions "to give more active support to successful private educational institutions, including their funding in accordance with the government targets and standards in the region."
Not necessarily private
"The development of the non-government sector in education does not necessarily make for the appearance of a large number of private, i.e. commercial schools," said Isak Frumin, research supervisor at the Institute of Education Development at the State University Higher School of Economics.
"For example, in pseudo-socialist Scandinavian countries and Holland, more than 50% of schools are non-governmental institutions created by parent associations, the church, or major corporations. Experience has shown that such schools offer better care for children and adolescents. Interestingly, in the West even the richest schools offer 20% of their places to gifted children from poor backgrounds. That sort of practice is unheard of in this country. Here, schools like that can only be created by enthusiastic reformers, parents, or teachers. Big corporations in Russia are also slow in developing such social projects. The only instance that springs to mind is the school created by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. As for the church, I would be rather more careful."
"While we are experiencing something like a revival of religious education, in Europe even the Jesuit order is becoming increasingly secular," says Frumin, who was headmaster of the Universe pilot school in Krasnoyarsk between 1987 and 1999. "Although it was an experimental school, it was a state school. I always put the needs of my pupils and their parents first. Unfortunately, most of my colleagues, the headmasters of other schools, had only one aim: to please their bosses," Mr Frumin says.
Lyubov Dukhanina, a member of the Public Chamber in charge of education, tells a somewhat different story. "The thinking behind supporting non-government schools is simple: under the Constitution, the state guarantees free secondary education, and the Law On Education envisages different forms of school ownership. The founder may be the state or an enthusiastic teacher or a philanthropist or a group of parents. All private schools obtain a license and state accreditation and have equal rights under the law. However, since 2004, non-government schools have faced discrimination. Previously, all educational institutions were exempt from property and land taxes; but then federal authorities handed their powers of taxation to the regions and allowed them to grant tax benefits. The regions were only too glad to avail themselves of this right: they preserved tax benefits for government schools and made the non-government alternatives pay the full tax," she says. Dukhanina has been the principal of the private school, Naslednik, for 17 years.
"For the seventh year now, some Russian children have used the playground of their school for free while the parents of others pay for it. And yet private non-government schools are not necessarily schools for the rich. They include schools for children in poor health, who have problems with eyesight and hearing, etc. And there are schools for gifted children. The closure of private schools saddens me. I hope that Mr Putin's statements will turn the situation around," she concludes.
But in the opinion of Frumin, a mathematician and teacher, although the Russian school system "is cumbrous and slow to react to new ideas," the state model should be preserved. He explains, "I think the system should be jolted out of its slumber and made to turn its attention to the client. In developing non-governmental education, one should prevent the spread of tuition-based education. I am a socialist at heart and I hope that institutions like the free state school will survive, but will evolve."
Isak Frumin described the Prime Minister's call to the heads of Russian regions to help non-government schools as a dangerous signal for competing state institutions: "Groups of activists will spring up, but practice shows that in the regions the most interesting (state) schools often come under pressure from education officials."
"I used to know a school in Novokuznetsk that was simply run into the ground by the local authorities. Its successes, experiments, and ideas were a thorn in their side," he says.
The Moscow Economics School is an example of a school created by parents. The chairman of the school's board, Alexander Zakharov, is former deputy governor of Sberbank and his deputy is Oleg Deripaska, the owner of Bazel.
"Wealthy people do not want their children to study abroad; what they want is for their children to be taught according to western standards. Yuri Shamilov, a talented manager, has succeeded. Of course, it is a very expensive private school to which it is hard to gain admission," Mr Frumin says.
What else did the prime minister say?
The new education standards which, along with the new Law On Education have been eagerly awaited by all parties in the education process, will be tried out in schools beginning in September 2011.
The Ministry of Education and Science is very vague as to the specifics. It is widely known that the Prosveshcheniye Publishing House prepared several variants of new standards back in the autumn of 2009; however, the Ministry says the changes will be mostly in the school environment rather than the content of the educational programmes. Vladimir Putin said, however, that the "introduction of new educational standards should not be treated as a formality, but should make a real improvement in the content of education and the school environment for children."
The Prime Minister also said that the salaries of the teachers in those Russian regions where new remuneration schemes have been introduced (depending on the number of pupils in the class) have been growing much faster than average. In 20 leading regions, he said, the teachers' salaries have reached the nationwide average and even exceeded it (in seven regions by 20%). One of the novelties of the Our New School project was the introduction of per capita financing, planned for 2012, which made it possible to increase teachers' salaries, the drafters say. However, when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited secondary school No.88 in Tyumen (Tyumen Region is one of the 31 regions where the comprehensive education modernization project Our New School is being introduced), he was told that teachers' salaries have recently increased from 9,000 to 22,000 roubles.
Vladimir Putin and Education Minister Andrei Fursenko also urged the need to abandon the system of small rural schools in favour of larger schools. The upkeep of small rural schools costs the state 4-10 times more. However, the pair argued that renouncing the traditional small village schools "should not become an end in itself."
"In order to evolve into a system of larger schools, it is necessary to lay the proper infrastructure: normal roads between villages, a power supply, school meals, and safe transit," the Prime Minister said. Mr Putin noted that "one should not try to run before one can walk, but one should not shirk the task by saying that conditions are not yet ripe in this or that place." "They should be created and we should move in that direction," the Prime Minister concluded.
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Dmitry Medvedev's "new school"
The project Our New School, initiated by President Dmitry Medvedev back in the autumn of 2009, is designed to implement comprehensive education modernization projects. The President believes that starting from 2010, the initiative will begin phasing in new general state education standards.
Another important area for improvement is the creation of a system that will support gifted children. Alongside these benefits, the programme hopes to preserve and strengthen the health of pupils and give greater financial and economic leeway to schools in order to enable citizens to choose schools in a more competitive educational market.
Yevgeny Nasyrov
