Education in Russia: News

andalusia wrote:I want to know is there a concern about failing public education in Russia and in other parts of Europe? Here in America, many people believe that the market would improve public education by having vouchers.  Moreover, many Americans dislike public schools since they think it is a socialist/ communist idea.  Is there faith in public schools in Russia and other parts of Europe?

I do not know about Russia, but in Italy the public schools are better than the private ones (the general opinion is that you go in a private schools you want to buy your high school diploma instead of studying for it, but maybe the situation is changing). Unfortunately, however, the quality is dropping in the recent years. Also almost all the good universities are public. (I do not like however how the money is spent in some cases, i believe that if something is paid by public money, it should because there is the need and opportunities to employ people in those roles or because they can give a real contribution to their field. If this is not the case, or people are not good enough to have the state pay for their studies, i believe they should do something else, or be willing.to pay full price for education.)

I find totally absurd that you have to pay a lot of money for a good education if you are capable and want to study something sensible.

In Germany also public education (both schools and University are to a high standard).
I like also the concept of berufausbildung (a vocational training of 2or 3 years thay many in Germany do as alternative to university). It is very well structured and include working and studying and recognized.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berufsausbildung

I would like to have this system implemented also in Italy.

Wow. Much of unbiased science flows into this ranking. "Academic Reputation". How is that measured? In Dollars?

Can´t remember all the details, but a few years ago a similar "study" by some english guys had to be axed after they revealed that they sucked the numbers from thin air.


One of the "basics" for such rankings is always the number of publications. In western sciences magazines. In english. No wonder russian and chinese are not in the top 10.

used toilet paper can be recycled.

I don't know about the situation in Russia or other countries, but at my place I witness a disease which affects large parts of teachers, parents, and education staffs. That disease is "addiction to English".

These patients consider that knowing English as God. English here. English there. They even teach English to kindergarten children. The children come back home largely speak foreign language and have difficulties in speaking their own mother tongue.

They don't understand that English is just a tool, however useful that tool is. They become a slave of English and the ones who control English. The one you know who, from the other side of the ocean.

Maths, physics, chemistry,... are neglected by these people. Especially maths. While in fact maths is the most important subjects needed to be taught in school, because it helps the student to develop a logical mind. With a logical mind, students can do well in other subjects, including foreign language.

Language is about communication... what we really need is a simple language with only a few tens of thousands of words, very simple grammar and structure... we could make it politically correct... with no gender except for specific words like he or she or it.

An alphabet of maybe 12 letters...

kvs wrote:

higurashihougi wrote:  

I don't know about the situation in Russia or other countries, but at my place I witness a disease which affects large parts of teachers, parents, and education staffs. That disease is "addiction to English".

These patients consider that knowing English as God. English here. English there. They even teach English to kindergarten children. The children come back home largely speak foreign language and have difficulties in speaking their own mother tongue.

They don't understand that English is just a tool, however useful that tool is. They become a slave of English and the ones who control English. The one you know who, from the other side of the ocean.

Maths, physics, chemistry,... are neglected by these people. Especially maths. While in fact maths is the most important subjects needed to be taught in school, because it helps the student to develop a logical mind. With a logical mind, students can do well in other subjects, including foreign language.

Unfortunately, after 1990 the education level in Russia has also degraded and "western style" BS "education" started to become popular.

That was probably true from the 90's to the mid-2000's, but for last 10 years they've been dominating the high school Science Olympiads....routinely matching, near-matching, or out beating students from countries with 3x (USA) or 10x (China and India) the population of the Federation....and in the case of America, a large percentage are made up of immigrant students from India and China... It should also be noted that Federation citizens have the highest per capita of college educated in the world at 55% (with a greater emphasis on hard sciences), more than double of America at 25%, the next leader would be Canada at 50% (with a greater emphasis of humanities).

The Russian team won 58 medals at the International Zhoutykovsky Olympiad

I like also the concept of berufausbildung (a vocational training of 2or 3 years thay many in Germany do as alternative to university). It is very well structured and include working and studying and recognized.

Here in New Zealand we have vocational training... we call them polytechs or polytechnics, where the learning is mostly hands on practical stuff that often generally leads to a job.

They are very hit and miss and while some are very well run, others are not so good. The government recently ruled that all polytechnics be joined together to pool their funding which the crap polys love because they can dip in to the funds of the well run ones... the well run ones of course are wondering why they are now expected to be carrying the ones that are not making money or doing a good job.

Some appear to be largely scams taking money for people for shit qualifications... womens studies and that sort of bullshit...

To be clear most polytechs in NZ are not scams and are well run and do a lot of good upskilling people quickly into trades.

We used to have apprenticeships that were great and terrible... great because it was hands on learning where you earned a reduced wage while you were learning but learned from someone in the work force actually working in the industry instead of from a lecturer who has never had a real job in their lives.

Terrible because sometimes it was just abused a good builder or electrician is not necessarily going to be a good teacher, and also sometimes the apprentice was used to do all the shit boring repetitive jobs the teacher didn't like doing... but then joining vinyl for three days is a good way to learn to join vinyl properly.

Apprenticeships were eliminated and pretty soon we started running out of skilled builders and plumbers and electricians etc.

My local polytech is a rather well run organisation that makes money but also has respected training courses... I have heard some in the North Island have courses which are really not useful for anything but they promote them to young people making them think a weird qualification would give them an edge in an interview... it doesn't if the qualification is not relevant.

We don't have community colleges, and didn't you know womens studies is a core requirement for the modern 21 C male... (kidding of course).

Basket weaving courses are popular along with carving courses and maori studies... there is plenty of demand for that stuff for tourism, and practical skills are becoming fashionable again... which I think is a good thing... when something of mine breaks I fix it... my nieces and nephews generally throw it in the bin and buy a new one... people are so wasteful these days... one failure or problem and it is in the bin.... that is the real reason the planet is .

OK, I did not know this. It sounded like community college was a generic thing. So your polytechs are a merged sort of entity that services
this part of the education "market".

My limited knowledge of what a community college is makes me think our equivalent is that some high schools here run night classes for people who work to learn new skills and get new qualifications. Things like food handling courses for someone wanting to get into a food related industry, or some other skill they want like metal work or wood work or cooking or sewing.

The merge of the polytechs is only recent and I believe is its just funding, I don't think they are unifying the courses.

If you want to become an electrician or a wielder or a car mechanic or panel beater there are courses at polytechnic that will train you up with all the basic skills to get you an entry level job with a company and they can further your training sort of thing.

They don't have dentistry courses or medical courses except things like midwifery and other such BS. (some of the BS they teach about childbirth made several of my sisters refuse their services...).

This
way nobody would be precluded from ranking up through their own initiative. Under streaming you are stuck in a hole.

Well that is a problem these days... I grew up at a time when there were jobs if you were prepared to do anything and everything... there is no job where you love everything about it... they all have their unpleasant or boring sides, but if you wanted variety you could always get another job. Of course back then loyalty and long duration employment meant something so you often had to explain gaps or rapid job changes to new employers... these days if you are working a job for more than 10 years they think something is wrong with you.... having a broad based skill set is valuable along with a solid set of customer service skills.

There is enough serious education to prevent the fluff courses altogether.

The problem there is what constitutes a fluff course... when I did my degree at university most of my friends did management and psychology papers, which sounded rather interesting... I did some Philosophy papers on formal logic and some low level anthropology papers because I thought they might be interesting and different enough from the dry computer course I was doing to keep me sane. I liked the Anth papers and for assignments I got 10 out of 10 for presentation in assignments because I typed up my papers so they could read them easily (unlike most other Anth students who hand wrote their papers). It is interesting that most departments insisted on their students doing the base computer paper so they could access email and type up their assignments... but of course you don't learn typing in one semester so most didn't really bother.

This year was the inaugural event for the international competition in computer science for schoolgirls featuring participants from 156 schools representing 39 countries.
Russia was represented by schoolgirl Ekaterina Shilyaeva from Physics and Mathematics Lyceum #31 from Chelyabinsk, Alisa Gladchenko from Moscow Secondary School of Pedagogic Excellence, Ekaterina Porai from Moscow school Letovo, and seventh grader Daria Grekova from Moscow School #2007.
The Russian girls set absolute records and won the maximum number of gold medals at the event. First place was shared by Ekaterian Shilyaeva and Alisa Gladchenko.
The team’s coach was Andrei Stankevich Associate Professor of the Faculty of Information Technologies and programming at ITMO.

Move over, Eton! Russia’s exclusive schools are taking on the world’s most elite institutions… if you can afford their price tags, by Ciara Haley for RTNEWS. 25.07.2021.


Letovo' School Wikipedia; (inset) Eton College Wikipedia

While schools around the world have struggled with how to give their kids a good education despite the disruption of the pandemic, one state-of-the-art private institution on the outskirts of Moscow had a bumper year for grades.

Letovo is no ordinary school. It is one of the very few in Russia that offers both a national diploma as well as a certificate from the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IB DP), opening doors to its students for overseas work and study. Elite schools such as this began to spring up following the 2013 –2015 Ukraine and Syria crises, which alienated Moscow from its former partners in the West. With a collapse in oil prices compounded by sanctions, the ruble crashed. In response, Russia’s wealthiest began to search for homegrown alternatives to the likes of Eton and Harrow, which had educated many of a generation of rich Russian children.

This year, Letovo’s graduates finished with one of the highest mean IB DP scores in the world. Their final-year students scored an average of 43 points, which is a head above the global standard of 33 points. Following these outstanding results, every single graduating student was admitted into their university of choice – including some of the West’s most prestigious higher-education institutions, such as Brown, Cornell, Duke, Chicago, Yale and Berkeley, Oxford, and Cambridge.

The academy sees itself as a kind of ‘start-up’ educational project. It was founded by the Russian billionaire, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Vadim Moshkovich, who made his fortune in agriculture. In an interview in 2018, the farming mogul stated, “I’m not building a school for children of officials or sanctioned businessmen or oligarchs from Rublyovka,” referring to Moscow’s most coveted and elite district. “Education is the key driver in the modern world and I want Russia to be competitive. This is for soul and country.”

Such a premium education comes at a premium price, however. Letovo’s base tuition fees are about $20,000 a year. While this is still around only half of what the top British public schools charge, such expenses are far above what the average Russian family can afford. Prospective students undergo a name-blinded exam and are means-tested, meaning that those who can’t afford the fees have a shot at receiving grants and scholarships to supplement the costs.

Within a broader analysis of Russia’s education system, this attempt to improve the education of the wealthy few who would otherwise have been sent abroad, or the worthy few who happen to be extremely intelligent, seems rather shallow.

For decades, some of Russia’s ultra-wealthy have been sending their kids to the US and UK for their education – Moshkovich’s own two eldest children were sent to Stanford. And even if admission hinges upon a blindly graded entrance exam, it doesn’t stop the rich from private-tutoring their way into Letovo. Although it’s classified as a not-for-profit project, the school remains, in essence, an elite attempt to emulate top foreign institutions. It aims to become a feeder into the best of the West, and still, ultimately, sends Russian children abroad to complete their further education.

The problem with ‘normal’ education in general today is often pinned to overworked, under-motivated teachers and chronic underfunding. In Russia, even the best teachers are underpaid compared to what those of similar educational attainment could earn in the private sector, and in many ‘free’ schools, teaching is more a matter of crowd control rather than effective learning. Critics such as Moshkovich have complained that “state primary and secondary schools still rely too much on memorization and standardized testing, and don’t do enough to encourage critical and creative thinking.” Given that Russia spends only about 3.7% of its GDP on education, it’s not surprising that state schools struggle to find the time and space to focus on creativity and critical thinking.

In an interview with Russian business daily RBC, Moshkovich claims, “Our goal is to provide a world-class education to any child in Russia, regardless of place of residence and material status. The current education system in most Russian schools is still focused primarily on knowledge, rather than skills and competencies. We want to unite all these areas to harmonize learning.” This is all well and good for those who can make it into his ‘superschool,’ but what about the ‘normal’ students in normal schools all around the country? Don’t they also deserve the chance at receiving a “world-class” education?

As Letovo shows, money really does make all the difference. The 36 graduates from this year’s class will go on to the world’s top universities with full support from Letovo’s educational fund, provided they return home on graduation and work in Russia for at least three years afterwards. The kind of opportunities that open up for young people when funds aren’t an issue are immense, and when they’re surrounded by a positive attitude towards learning and by decently paid, enthusiastic teachers, the sky's the limit. It’s just a shame that not every child will get that chance.

https://www.rt.com/russia/530019-exclusive-schools-elite-institutions/