By Vestnik Kavkaza
The State Duma discusses adoption of the draft federal law "On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in Connection with the Adoption of the Federal Law", "On Education in the Russian Federation" and the "Annulment of Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation.” The chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education Vyacheslav Nikonov told journalists about his view on the reform of education, certification of academic staff, the draft unified concept of a school course of Russian history, and other topics directly related to the educational sphere.
Vyacheslav Nikonov says that the situation in our science and in our education over the past 20 years has been characterized many times as catastrophic. “Indeed, if during the Soviet period, especially in the 1950-1960s, our system of education and science was considered the most exemplary in the world, and the Soviet Union was copied everywhere, including the United States, our educational systems, standards and so on were copied, in the last 20 years, first, the system collapsed, secondly, we ourselves began to copy those systems that had copied us previously,” Nikonov complains. “In the 1990s, we lost in science and education the generation that should have been the honor of the Russian intellectual elite now. And this generation has largely not gone to scientific and educational institutions. Some of them left and were honored abroad, especially in Western science and education, and the rest didn't go. So, yes, in many ways, what has happened is catastrophic. We have lost a significant part of the scientific potential. Suffice it to say that the editions of scientific journals fell by 15 times in this period. The attendance of academic libraries fell by 20 times. And it is not only the Internet which drove people out of libraries and scientific journals. The funding was exceptionally low.”
In recent years, we are just starting to get out of the deep crisis in which Russian education and science found themselves in the 1990s. However, Vyacheslav Nikonov doesn’t consider the present situation as absolutely disastrous. He divides current problems in different levels: “If we look at our pre-school education, and in accordance with the Law on Education this is an educational level now, we find very few countries where this level exists. Therefore, from the point of view of pre-school education, I believe we have great achievements. But there is a big problem. The number one problem is that now educational standards have just been produced. And they are made public, and we also intend to take part in the discussion. Not everything is all right there, and we will have to examine this carefully. Standards in principle are necessary. The only difference from the standards of other levels is the fact that there will be no selection. There will be no exams before secondary school,” chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education explains.
As for the secondary schools, Nikonov noted that according to world comparisons, primary education in Russia is just wonderful. “We're still among the top-four leading countries, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Finland. Our education in secondary school remains at a high level. We are among the top ten or twenty in various comparisons, skipping the countries of eastern Asia, where there has always been a strong Confucian tradition of education, a culture of education. We fall behind in high school.” According to him this is due to the fact that, because of the exam system as it exists at the moment, too many children stop learning in those subjects in which they are not going to take the exam. “Children can finish school, passing only two unified state examinations - in Russian language and mathematics, while 11 subjects are studied, which in itself is not true. Probably a way out should be to improve the system of the USE,” Vyacheslav Nikonov thinks.
As for higher education, he says that here Russia is in the top thirty at bachelor's level, which is now getting on its feet, at the level of specialties. “But we significantly fall behind at the next level - master's level and postgraduate level. Master's level began to take shape only in recent years. And post-graduate level is what has traditionally been seen as the level when you just have to pass exams and write your thesis. Nevertheless, in developed countries this level is the level where the best teachers teach the best students. And here a major gap in the preparation of highly qualified personnel appears. The Law on Education now introduces this level as a third level of higher education and creates the appropriate conditions so that there were standards allowing to continue studies, which would really help preparing staff of the highest class,” Nikonov concluded.
