Education system in Russia

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Education system in Russia

The education system in Russia includes the country's schools and universities. It is divided into four sections, general school education, vocational training, university education and postgraduate training .

schools

The general school education is subdivided into the levels of elementary, main and upper level.

School entry takes place at the age of 6½ to 7 years. The early school age of six years is recommended on average for about 35% of children according to a psychological report. The primary level of primary or early school graduate who enrolled in school at age seven children within four years. Despite the fact that there is compulsory education in Russia , according to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, about 8.5 thousand students were educated at home in the 2016/2017 school year . From the age of 10, children with top marks can enter cadet schools, where they also receive military training.

This is followed by an obligatory five-year secondary school level. It leads to the acquisition of “basic general education” - usually at the end of the ninth grade and after reaching compulsory school age of 16 years. This qualification entitles the holder to attend upper secondary school (two years), the completion of which enables students to take up university studies with the “certificate of complete secondary education” (traditionally known as the “school-leaving certificate”). In terms of reputation, it is comparable to the Abitur in Germany, but because there are too few school years it is not recognized here without further qualifications (e.g. two years of study in Russia).

After nine years of compulsory education, vocational training at the middle technical school or the technical center can be taken instead of the secondary school level. These facilities are still available in the vertically permeable entire vocational education system for the acquisition of the complete middle education ( dual training course ). Because in addition to the profession-specific subjects, the general subjects are also taught, but the content is oriented towards the professional orientation.

Colleges

There are basically three types of higher education institutions in Russia: universities, academies and institutes. Universities and academies "carry out the training, retraining and upgrading of people with a qualification at the highest level, conduct not only applied research, but also basic research, hold an aspirant and (or) doctoral degree, and are leading scientific and methodological centers at their university respective subject areas. ". The difference between university and academy is that the university has a much broader area of ​​education than an academy that focuses on a specific area. The field of activity of an institute is also limited, but it does not have to be "a leading center in its field to train people with a qualification at the highest level, to have an aspirational and doctoral degree and in any case to carry out basic research".

In the early 1990s there was a status-related differentiation in the non-university sector, which led to structural changes. Many “institutes” succeeded in attaining the status of a university or an academy (as a new type of university, e.g. Plekhanov Academy for Economics in Moscow ). In this way, these universities were able to improve their competitiveness in the newly created education market and strengthen their international contacts. They were also given the opportunity to offer postgraduate courses.

Because of the difficulties of state funding for education, the educational institutions were forced to generate additional income: mainly by renting the premises to private companies, selling the products made in the workshops and introducing tuition fees . The practice of offering further study places in addition to the state-funded study places spread more and more, the fees of which, however, had to be borne by the students themselves. Today up to 40% of the study places are given to self-payers. This intensified competition between universities. In this regard, Russian universities are increasingly striving to position themselves as a brand in the education market in order to increase the number of students and the amount of tuition fees received.

Educational history until 1990

The tsarist empire until 1917 had a poorly developed education system, even if Peter the Great and Catherine the Great had initiated some reforms. The People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR existed since the beginning of the Bolshevik government in 1917. On June 26, 1918 (June 13), the Council of People's Commissars issued “ The Decree on the Organization of Popular Education in the Russian Republic ” with Lenin's signature . The education in the Soviet Union until 1991 was characterized by ongoing reforms ideological sign.

Russian development since the 1990s

The Russian education system initially followed that of the Soviet Union. Only slowly did the old system develop its own traits as a result of the criticism.

State monopoly on education

The transformation of the economic system from a planned economy to a market economy and the failures of earlier educational reforms intensified criticism of the rigidity of the state monopoly on education and public demands for educational alternatives. In 2002 there was a large number of different non-governmental educational offers for two reasons:

  1. The general secondary school of the Soviet era, designed as a mass school, did not meet the increased quality requirements of the 1990s. Private tutoring as preparation for college became widespread in the wealthy classes of society.
  2. Often out of comparison with other school systems, an educational reform movement emerged that tried to reform the school system from below. The aim of this movement was to make school life and teaching more innovative.

The result was a demand-oriented education market with private schools that took into account the individual needs of pupils and students and offered options in the field of education. A major step in promoting the privatization of the education system was Boris Yeltsin's decree in 1991, which for the first time explicitly guaranteed state support for non-state educational institutions. This marked the formal end of the state monopoly on education based on the Soviet model. The plan to privatize the entire education system, however, was rejected by society because on the one hand an enrichment campaign and on the other hand the loss of the usual free education were feared. That is why the Duma decided in 1995 a three-year moratorium on any privatization of state educational institutions.

Decentralization and individualization

Decentralization played an important role in removing the bureaucratic power structures of the Soviet era. In education, regionalization was promoted by three developments:

  • I. Shift of political-administrative competencies downwards.
  • II. Transformation of the economic structure from a planned economy to a market economy and thus a reduction in the importance of specialist training and a stronger focus on the needs of regional labor markets.
  • III. Crisis in the state funding of the education system, which made the use of other funding structures necessary.

The regionalization brought economies of scale with it; Through horizontal integration, smaller universities with different profiles and specializations were combined into a full university, universities with a focus profile were formed at larger university locations and previously independent universities were integrated into existing universities in order to complete the offerings of those universities. Vertical integration also took place, with universities trying to organizationally bind educational institutions at other levels to themselves in order to secure their own position. In order to meet the wishes of the students to be able to study in the vicinity of their place of residence, branches were also established by the universities.

The main objectives of the educational reform of the 1990s were democratization , de-ideologization, denationalization, diversification, decentralization, autonomy, humanization and individualization of education. The democratization of education should be achieved through the abolition of the unified character of socialist education and through the orientation of education to the individual demands of the students. The pluralization of the educational offer was aimed at promoting the private education sector. In addition, the scope for autonomy gave the educational institutions the opportunity to set their own priorities and to develop special profiles. However, the implementation of decentralization led to a shift in financial responsibility to the municipal and educational institution level.

New state control of pluralization

In 2013, the conception of a new uniform Russian history book was presented, which should extend to a positive representation of the current political leadership. Lev Gudkow , on the other hand, called the school the “most backward-looking institution in the country” in 2016. According to the sociology professor Elena Omeltschnko, the activities of the youth declined after 2011/12, i.e. at the moment when the state power had started a repressive campaign against civil society. But since Russians under 30 watch less and less television, they evade the propaganda of the state broadcasters. In the course of this development, the Kommersant reported in autumn 2016 from state informants who were supposed to investigate "anti-state machinations" or "destructive political forces" at educational institutions. Trained specialists should "refute unwanted theories" in educational institutions. There was intimidation in schools, observers explained that the government was trying to prevent protest movements. In the Novaya Gazeta, Irina Lukyanova warned against tests of opinion , which, as Russia's past was all too well known, would determine career opportunities. Such political obedience was required even after 15,000 students signed against a 2018 World Cup fan zone on their university campus; Instead of being heard, students were threatened with bad exams, denounced, secret service surveillance and "compromising evidence", and disobedient students were called "fascists", "terrorists" or "foreign-paid provocateurs" on the Internet .

The European University of Saint Petersburg , whose teaching license was revoked for one year in September 2017 , was also a target of the arbitrary authorities , while in 2018 the same fate befell the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, which, according to Andrei Kolesnikov, was "ideologically motivated"; this ideology includes "patriotism, isolationism, conservatism".

See also

literature

  • O. Smolin: The higher education system in Russia: legislation, reality, potential for cooperation. In: University Rectors' Conference: University Policy in Russia and Germany: Contributions to the German-Russian University Exchange , 1999. (= Contributions to University Policy . 11/1999). Bonn 1999, pp. 47-54.
  • Friedrich Kuebart: From Perestroika to Transformation - Vocational Training and Higher Education in Russia and East Central Europe. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-936522-09-X .
  • Maria Belaja-Lucić: The Post-Soviet Education System. Discourses in the mirror of the newspaper “Pervoe sentjabrja” (1992-1999) , Erlanger Contributions to Pedagogy Vol. 7, Waxmann: Münster, Munich et al. 2009

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ More and more children are being homeschooled in Russia - russland.NEWS. Retrieved on March 12, 2020 (German).
  2. ↑ Cadet School: Boys and Girls Taking Kalashnikov Lessons , RBTH, June 19, 2017
  3. ^ The school system in Russia. Retrieved August 3, 2020 .
  4. ↑ (Smolin 1999, p. 51f.)
  5. ↑ See Kuebart (2002), pp. 101-106.
  6. ↑ See Kuebart (2002), p. 46f.
  7. ↑ See Kuebart (2002), p. 93.
  8. ↑ Russia's textbook dispute - Putin makes history , Spiegel, November 23, 2013
  9. ↑ A lost generation? , NZZ, November 8, 2016
  10. ↑ a b Protests in Russia - The Critical Generation Putin , NZZ, March 30, 2017
  11. ↑ A game with the iPhone and Putin - How young Russians fight the passivity of their peers , NZZ, November 8, 2016, page 7
  12. ↑ "A new form of counter-propaganda is a fight for the heads of the wavering" , Kommersant, October 24, 2016
  13. ↑ Be Trustworthy , Novaya Gazeta, October 28, 2017
  14. ↑ MSU students who were not welcome to the guests of the football festival were under pressure from the management of the university and the special services , Novaya Gazeta, June 12, 2018
  15. ↑ License Restored for European University in St. Petersburg , Moscow Times, August 10, 2018
  16. ^ The European University of St. Petersburg defies the arbitrariness of the authorities ; NZZ, December 5, 2017
  17. ↑ "This is a war on Russian education," Novaya Gazeta, September 4, 2018
  18. ^ The Barbarian Offensive , Novaya Gazeta, June 27, 2018.