EducationCOMMISSION FOR ADMISSION TO THE METRONew Times.ru
September 2006
Source“The root of all evil lies not in reform itself, but in the incomplete reforming of the educational system”, says Anatoly PINSKY, the director of the School Development Centre at the Higher School of Economics
What awaits our universities, institutes and schools in the near future?
In 2001, the government of the Russian Federation approved the Programme for Modernizing Education up to the year 2010. It was called “Filippov Reform” after the then minister of education. It envisaged not giving marks in primary school and the introduction of a foreign language and informatics in the second and third grade, economics, law and information technologies in junior high and high school, and also teaching seniors the ABCs of future trades and professions.
School financing should also have been changed: teachers’ salaries, teaching aids, etc. should come out of the budget of the republics and regions; the maintenance of school buildings and the utilities should be paid for by the municipal authorities.
The financing of technical and trade schools was to be transferred from the federal to the regional budgets. It was decided to start an experiment – to introduce a uniform final examination at school, and also to evolve a new model of financing higher education.
Will the tuition for a higher education depend on how a student does on the uniform final examination?
Education will be free for 50 percent of the students and there will still be stipends. Their size will depend on a student’s marks. As for tuition, it will depend on the results of a uniform final exam: the better a student does on it, the lower the tuition.
The president and teacher’s salaryWhat has been done in recent years?
In ten regions upperclassmen have been successfully learning the ABCs of trade and a profession. In some primary schools languages are being taught and marks are no longer given. Incidentally, this practice has existed in the West and in many countries of the world for quite some time.
A uniform final examination has been given for three years now and a personal state “educational voucher”(Russian abbreviation: GIFO) introduced.
Can the educational reform be viewed as a success?
In my view, the direction of the reform is correct, but if it is not implemented more energetically, there will hardly be any tangible results. The schools will continue to eke out a miserable existence, and the teachers will be mostly women of pre-retirement age. And higher education will continue to remain on an unjust basis. Filippov planned a great amount of work, but he is no longer the minister of education.
What is the strategic plan of the new ministry?
We shall find out in the autumn, after the new minister makes his report to the cabinet. I think that serious ideological changes will have to be made in the uniform final examination. My personal view is that it should be voluntary.
Will a teacher’s salary continue to depend on the number of lessons he or she gives?
The president has mentioned this subject twice recently, but so far no decision has been made on the matter.
In that case labour turnover and the shortage of teachers would grow. So much so that some schools would have to close their doors altogether.
It is not true that we have a shortage of teachers and that the schools are empty. Of course, we could raise the question of the teachers’ qualifications, but this is another matter. The labour turnover in such a big city as St.Petersburg is only three to four percent a year. In the provinces where people do not get their salaries for months, teachers are always paid theirs. And principals do not run around looking for teachers.
But there are schools in Moscow where physics, foreign languages or P.E. are not taught for years…
According to the law, a school has the right to function if it has a license. Do you know of any instances when a school was closed because its license was withdrawn for not teaching all subjects?
It’s quite understandable why such schools are not closed.
Nobody is saying that all is well in the sphere of education. But this is more likely just the nature of things rather than a result of the reforms. Things are bad precisely because the reforms are not being implemented thoroughly enough, not vice versa.
Chubais is again to blame…So who and what is impeding the reforms?
The question seems simple enough, but there is no simple answer. On one hand, society is faced with a host of other problems like, for example, the re-election of the president in Argentina, the Olympics in Greece, a world tour of the opera diva Montserrat Caballe… They overshadow education. And on the other, there is an enormous inertia, and not only among the teachers. Many people reason as follows: “When we lived under the Soviet regime, the teaching in schools, universities and institutes was O.K. Now everything is upside down. Who is to blame? Of course, Yeltsin, Chubais, Gaidar and, naturally, Filippov. The dispute over whether the Soviet secondary schools and colleges were good or bad is of a purely philosophical nature today.
And what is your personal opinion?
I think it was bad. But this is only a worthless assessment, nothing more, because the country in which these schools worked is no more. There is no economic and political system with its State Planning Committee and the Central Committee of the Communist Party. This is why nostalgia for the old secondary school and old college is absolutely meaningless. However, these nostalgic sentiments are still quite strong among the people.
And who is most likely to overcome this inertia?
I shall give you an unexpected answer. At present extramural studies are developing very rapidly in big cities, particularly in Moscow. There are excellent schools in the capital where up to 40 percent of the upperclassmen study extramurally. This means that it is not the ministers or teachers who are beginning to think and act in a new way, but the parents and children. Doing this they are saying: “We don’t want your school. We will enroll, pass the final exam and receive a certificate. But we shall solve the problem of our children’s education ourselves”.
There is a similar situation in the United States. A broad campaign has been launched in that rich country – “Parents Against Attending School”.
Is the school crisis a worldwide process?
Of course. It concerns not only Russia, Uzbekistan, or some other country. Take Germany, for example, the country which spent the greatest sums on education in Europe and where teachers’ salaries were the highest. Two years ago, after an international survey of the situation in education, it was found out that Germany was below the average level. The Germans were shocked and began to discuss their educational system. Not to mention that Russia was third from the bottom. And nobody here seems to care. Our country is saved, thank God, by the high price of oil which we still extract and export.
How the state confronted the schoolIn August, the Duma adopted and the Federation Council endorsed a huge number of changes in the legislation on education. What can you say about them?
The situation is very serious, many people regard it catastrophic. The old law on the priority of education, according to which the teachers’ salaries should not be lower than the average for the country, and the professors’ salaries should be double that size, have been abolished. Private schools, along with the state-run ones, have been deprived of their privileges and subsidies. Additional state subsidies to gifted children and those who are retarded have been repealed.
But this is tantamount to a virtual crackdown on schools, isn’t it?
Of course. Far from all these obligations and provisions were fulfilled previosuly, yet they served as points of reference. Now there are no such points. The ideas and standards laid down in the law of 1992 on the academic and financial-economic autonomy of educational establishments have also been annulled. The freedom of schools and universities is now greatly restricted.
And who do we have to thank for this?
Definitely not the Ministry of Education. This is the line of our economic bodies, the Ministry of Finance, first and foremost.
Now the law regards schools and higher educational institutions as some autonomous non-commercial bodies.
And what rules of the game will they have to follow?
So far, it’s not quite clear. If this is a one-sided process – just the removal of privileges and the introduction of stricter rules – this is bad, of course. If this is a double-edged process, then it may open new opportunities to those who are not afraid of taking the initiative and entrepreneurial risks. But no one can give you any definite answer as to what we can expect from all this, because there is no clear-cut legislation on the new school system yet.
Evidently, the Ministry of Education will no longer be free in going about reform. Beginning from 1992, when the first Law on Education of the Russian Federation was adopted (after the disintegration of the USSR), these are the biggest and most serious changes. Of course, time is needed to understand and get used to them.
Who has been “black-listed”?Speaking on the Echo of Moscow radio station in July, Fursenko, the Minister of Science and Education, said that there were too many higher educational institutions in the country. But he didn’t specify whether that was good or bad.
In his latest State-of-the-Nation Address to the Federal Assembly, President Putin also mentioned this. He thinks that our network of the institutions of higher learning is too big and badly organized. I can add that, according to statistics, the number of places at these institutions will soon exceed the number of aplicants.
Nevertheless, it is hardly possible to get in the Linguistic University or the Lumumba University without paying a good sum of money if a boy or a girl is not a minister’s relative. Because no matter if one is a brain and one’s father a professor at one of these universities, one will not be admitted without paying a bribe.
As long as the admission system remains the same, bribery will continue to thrive. If this system is changed after the German or American pattern, or if a unified final examination is introduced, bribe-taking will, of course, exist, but to a much lesser extent. In the West, a university does not admit students on the basis of the results of its own exams or interviews. A student is admitted after he or she sends the results of national tests and also a portfolio of his or her achievements.
For comparison’s sake, just imagine that a commission would be set up that would decide after talking to you whether you are fit to use the metro or not. Of course, bribes would immediately come into being. Because, the commission would arbitrarily decide either to let you use it or say: “You’re not fit, take a bus.” This is, naturally, a faulty system.
On one hand, bribes, and on the other, one can buy any diploma, let alone graduation certificates for some 250 dollars in the underground passes in the metro.
That is a matter for Vladimir Ustinov, our Prosecutor General. Indeed, one can buy anything, except, of course, health, talent and friendship. An acquaintance of mine bet on being able to buy a tank and drive it home, and he won. But a faked diploma is useless if a person has no knowledge or skills. But in general, if there is anything to make money on, it will be done.
Including on education. In many higher educational institutions the quality of education received is now equal to the sum invested. The other day, Fursenko advised avoiding institutes and universities where the tuition is from one to two thousand dollars a year.
Naturally, man always seeks what is cheaper. But today it is impossible to get a good education cheaply. There are now a great many institutes and their branches which admit students for 400 or 500 dollars a year. In essence, they simply stamp fake diplomas.
And what should applicants who are unable to pay such sums do?
We have plenty of higher educational establishments without tuition, and the number of places vacancies there will not be curtailed. Besides, who said that everybody must necessarily get a higher education and be happy only with a diploma?
There is talk nowadays about closing down a number of institutes. Recently, the newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” even printed a projected “black list”, and last week the “Kommersant” daily mentioned the number of educational establishments whose licenses would be withdrawn – 19.
I think these rumours are unfounded. Nineteen – this is too small a figure. I am sure that within the next few years hundreds of institutions of higher learning will be closed. And first and foremost, cheap private institutions trading in faked diplomas. Prestigious institutes and academies that have had a good reputation for many years, like the Lumumba University, Bauman Technical Academy, Moscow Institute of Engineering and Physics, or the Literary Institute, will not be touched. Forget about “black lists” and don’t worry.
Then when shall we have the next decisions on the reform?
The reform is a continuing process. Some part of it is stepped up, another is slowed, still another is started… The reform is like life itself, which goes on and on.
Interviewed by Yevgenia Ulchenko