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The EP experts cannot decide on the criteria for monitoring Russian education

 

Recently, everyone has been hearing about the monitoring of educational institutions and the Russian education system by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. In January of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the government to develop and approve the monitoring procedure. The head of state asked to pay special attention to the validity of the assessment criteria and the mandatory discussion of the principles and criteria with the professional and expert communities.

 

The final approval of the rules for monitoring the education system in the Russian Federation should be completed before August 1, 2013, however, it became known the day before that the experts who were part of the working group to determine the procedure for monitoring the education system could not agree on common criteria and the composition of information.

According to the law "On Education in the Russian Federation", adopted by the State Duma in December 2012, executive authorities are required to conduct public monitoring of the education system, it must contain information about the state of the material base and the conditions of educational activities, educational and extracurricular achievements of students.

The new educational law will come into force on September 1, 2013, but despite this, there is still no exact list of information to be collected.

“We need to rely more on independent measurement tools. I believe that it makes sense for the ministry to commission independent organizations to conduct monitoring,” said Yaroslav Kuzminov, Rector of the Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE).

In addition, members of the working group criticized the intention to collect information on the participation of young people in social movements, the inadequacy of material assessment criteria and the monitoring procedure itself.

“Is it possible to consider “patriotic education” as an indicator of the success of a school? It is no longer relevant to evaluate schools by the number of computers used,” says Efim Rachevsky, director of the Moscow Education Center No. 548 “Tsaritsyno”.

As part of the monitoring, he proposes, among other things, to unify the requirements for schools' websites in order to ensure their openness.

According to the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, members of the working group should submit their proposals regarding the procedure and composition of the monitoring at the next meeting, which will be held in two weeks.