home

Chapter I. Reforming the education system in Russia. Stages of reforming education in Russia. Educational policy of the Russian Federation at the present stage

ANALYSIS OF THE STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE IN RUSSIA

Russia has been undergoing a reform of education for several years now, which is now increasingly called the more politically correct word "modernization". These transformations did not go unnoticed in society, divided into their supporters and opponents. In 2004, the problems of national education were also discussed in the highest echelons of power. In particular, President Vladimir Putin paid much attention to them in his Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. And in early December 2004, the Government of the Russian Federation approved the priority directions for the development of the domestic education system, prepared by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. Prime Minister Fradkov also identified three main areas of reform: ensuring the availability of education for all segments of the population, improving the quality of teaching and improving the financing of the sphere.

The essence of the reform comes down to the introduction in Russia of a two-level system of higher education (bachelor and master), the creation of a system of preschool education, reducing the weekly load on school students, giving them the opportunity to choose those subjects that they need more in the future, and receive additional education.

The transition to a two-tier system is the task of the Bologna process. In 1999, in the Italian city of Bologna, a joint declaration was signed by the ministers of education of a number of European states, announcing the creation of a common European educational space. The countries that signed this declaration pledged by 2010 to develop comparable national education systems, criteria and methods for assessing its quality, to cooperate in the recognition of national education documents at the European level.

In general, the Bologna process provides for a set of interrelated measures aimed at bringing together educational systems and methods for assessing the quality of knowledge, academic degrees and qualifications in European countries. As a result of all the transformations, students should have greater freedom in choosing a place and study program, and the process of their employment in the European market will become easier.

In September 2003, Russia joined the Bologna Declaration. But get into pan-European process it will be very difficult for our country, since the domestic educational system is traditionally far from foreign. In particular, the difficulty lies in the system of training Russian graduates. The transition to a two-tier education system was started in many Russian universities back in 1992, but it is not popular with us.

First of all, many did not understand the bachelor's degree, which most Russians continue to consider evidence of incomplete higher education. Domestic bachelor's programs, which differ significantly from Western ones, are also problematic. For four years of study, Russian universities, with rare exceptions, do not provide their bachelor graduates with full-fledged knowledge in the specialty, sufficient for them to be able to use it in practical work, since more than half of the academic hours are devoted to teaching fundamental disciplines. As a result, after receiving a bachelor's degree, most students continue their education and receive traditional Russian diplomas of specialists or become masters.

In addition to the two-tier system of Russia, in order to fully enter the common European educational space, it will soon be necessary to adopt a credit system for recognizing learning outcomes, as well as a supplement to a higher education diploma similar to the European one, and organize a system comparable to the European quality assurance system for educational institutions and university programs.

In addition, the modernization of education involves a new form of its financing, including the transition to the so-called normative-per capita method, when "money follows the pupil and student." However, the privatization of the educational system and the widespread introduction of paid higher education in the near future is out of the question. At the same time, the Ministry of Education proposes to give, in particular, secondary school teachers the opportunity to provide additional paid services to students.

Perhaps, none of the areas of modernization of the domestic system of higher education has caused as much controversy as the introduction of a unified state exam. The experiment on the introduction of the Unified State Examination has been going on in Russia since 2001, and every year more and more regions of the Russian Federation take part in it. And all this time, the confrontation between supporters (among them - officials, directors of secondary and secondary specialized educational institutions) and opponents of the unified state exam (which included most of the leaders high school). The arguments of the former were that the USE is an effective tool for fighting corruption in universities, it is able to objectively identify the level of knowledge of students and the level of teaching in schools in various regions of Russia, as well as make it more accessible for young people from the outback to enter elite higher educational institutions. Opponents of the USE pointed out that it completely excludes a creative approach in the selection of future students by universities, which, as you know, is best implemented in a personal conversation between the examiner and the applicant. In their opinion, this is fraught with the fact that not the most gifted students, but those who managed to properly prepare and answer most of the test questions, will get into higher education.

However, the three years during which the experiment lasts have led to the fact that the opposing sides have suddenly taken a step towards each other. The rectors acknowledged that the Unified State Examination really helps children from remote places in Russia to get a higher education, that the work of admissions committees has become less laborious and more transparent. And the supporters of the experiment understood that corruption had migrated from universities to secondary schools, that the introduction of the Unified State Examination was associated with a number of organizational difficulties, that the unified state exam could not be the only form of testing the knowledge of applicants, and listened to the arguments of the rectors, who had long been talking about the need to provide benefits to applicants universities to winners of Olympiads, including regional ones.

It was previously assumed that the USE would be officially introduced throughout Russia in 2005. However, the shortcomings identified during this experiment led to the fact that, at the initiative of the Minister of Education and Science, Andrei Fursenko, the experiment was extended until 2008.

The experiment related to the USE on the introduction of state nominal financial obligations (GIFO) has also been extended. The essence of GIFO is that the graduate, based on the results of recruited USE time points are issued a cash certificate, which is intended to pay for tuition at the university. Unlike the USE, this project was less promoted and information about it rarely became available to the general public. Perhaps this is due to the fact that over the several years during which the experiment lasted, more questions than answers appeared.

Initially, it was obvious that GIFO was an expensive project, so it was carried out on a smaller scale than the USE experiment. Only a few universities from Mari El, Chuvashia, and Yakutia took part in it. But the results of the experiment for the 2002/03 academic year revealed the fact of overspending of public funds. It turned out that the cost of category “A” GIFO (the best results in the Unified State Examination) was too high and it was beneficial for universities to accept as many excellent students as possible.

Rates were immediately cut and the next year the GIFO experiment was carried out according to a different scheme. It ceased to bring material benefits to universities. To the rectors' objections that even the highest GIFO rates cannot fully compensate for the cost of educating one student, the initiators of the experiment responded that the GIFO provides for covering only part of the costs.

However, despite all the imperfection and cost of the GIFO experiment, it is impossible to completely abandon it today. Because in essence this is a scheme of the so-called per capita principle of financing universities. This is an alternative to the estimated principle of financing, from which, as you know, Russian system Education intends to leave, and in addition, an alternative to the introduction of a fully paid education in the country. Now many, in particular the Russian Union of Rectors and a number of high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Education and Science, are proposing to back up the GIFO with a system of educational loans that students will take from public and private banks, as well as from commercial companies. The first positive results of providing educational loans to students of the country's leading universities are already there. However, this idea has many critics who believe that not all regions of Russia are ready for the introduction of educational loans today, but only the most economically developed ones, and the majority of the country's population does not yet trust the new financing mechanism. In addition, even in the United States, which is prosperous from the point of view of the financial and credit system, where education on credit is widely developed, the return of such loans is a big problem, to say nothing of Russia.

Russia, having become on a par with democratic states after the collapse of the USSR and the formation of new states of the USSR (CIS), signed bilateral agreements with other states. Was accepted federal program development of education, approved by the Federal Law of April 10, 2000 No. 51-FZ. The main objective of this program is to improve the state and social protection of the two subjects of the process of education and training.

The Russian Federation has duly signed and ratified the Lisbon Recognition Convention (Diploma Supplement). According to Article 15 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation “Generally recognized principles and norms international law and international treaties of the Russian Federation are an integral part of its legal system. If an international treaty of the Russian Federation establishes other rules than those provided for by law, then the rules of the international treaty shall apply.

Currently, the educational policy of Russia is actively developing. Her general principles are defined in the current legislation of the Russian Federation.

The Russian Federation joined the Bologna process on September 19, 2003 in Berlin during the summit of European ministers of education.

A full-fledged entry into the Bologna process required our country (as well as from the countries that joined earlier) to reform the education system as a whole and higher vocational education in particular. The reform provides, first of all, the development of educational programs compatible with European ones, and for their implementation - the corresponding transformation of university structures, the regulatory framework and, finally, teaching practice.

After the signing of the Bologna Declaration in Russia, "Priority Directions for the Development of the Educational System of the Russian Federation" were developed and approved by the Government in December 2004. This document for the first time declared the implementation in our country in the near future of the principles of the Bologna Process: the need to form a list of educational programs and the National Qualifications Framework corresponding to the international classifiers of educational programs and the European Qualifications Framework; legislative introduction of a two-level education system (bachelor - master), transition to a credit-modular construction of educational programs.

Further, by order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation of February 15, 2005 No. 40, the “Action Plan for the Implementation of the Provisions of the Bologna Declaration in the System of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation for 2005-2010” was approved, and in the spring of 2005 the Government of the Russian Federation approved the “Complex of Measures on the implementation of priority areas for the development of the educational system of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2010, which also provides for the transition to educational programs of the "Bologna" type. Finally, Government Decree No. 803 of December 23, 2005 approved the Federal Target Program for the Development of Education for 2006-2010 (FTsPRO), which defines the procedure for conducting and financing measures to reform the domestic educational system.

In the course of implementing the orders of the Government and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the following has been done so far:

1. As a result of the adoption at the end of 2007 of the relevant amendments to the federal laws of the Russian Federation “On Education” and “On Higher and Postgraduate Professional
2. education” the transition of Russian universities to the level training of personnel is legislatively fixed.
3. The process of developing and approving qualification (professional) standards for areas of activity with the participation of associations of employers has begun.
4. Draft federal state educational standards for the preparation of bachelors and masters have been developed and are being approved - the main documents that define the requirements for the structure of basic educational programs, the conditions for their implementation and the results of development (in the form of a set of required competencies).

The new generation of Russian educational standards was created on the basis of the basic principles of the Bologna Process: with a focus on learning outcomes expressed in the format of competencies, and taking into account labor costs in credit units. A prerequisite for the development of standards was the participation in this process of professional associations of employers, and, where possible, the use of new professional standards to formulate the required competencies of graduates.

But the biggest innovation for the domestic educational practice was the “framework” nature of the new generation standards. Throughout almost the entire 20th century, the educational process in the USSR was carried out according to the so-called "standard" curricula and programs of disciplines, uniform throughout the former Soviet Union. Differences in the curricula of universities did not exceed 10-12%. In turn, the predecessors of the new generation of the Federal State Educational Standards, the State Educational Standards (SES) of the first (1997) and second (2000) generations in Section 4, the most important for universities. “Requirements for the mandatory minimum content of the main educational program” contained ( with some exceptions), a strict list of disciplines, practices and reporting forms, which the university had no right to deviate from. Moreover, the standards controlled the volume (expressed in academic hours) and the content of each of the disciplines, enshrined in the list of “didactic units” indicated after its name - the main sections of the training course. And yet, the degree of independence of the university in creating curriculum(due to the so-called "regional" and "university" components of the educational program and courses of the student's choice) in the 1990s-2000s. gradually grew and amounted to 15-20% in the first generation SES VPO, and about 30% in the second generation. The new generation of standards provides for further expansion of the freedom of universities. The Federal State Educational Standard defines only half (50%) of the bachelor's educational program as the basic (mandatory) for a set of disciplines (modules) (for the master's program, the so-called "variable part" is more than 70%). Moreover, even in the “obligatory” part of the program (with the exception of several positions in the cycle of humanitarian and socio-economic disciplines), not rigidly fixed training courses, but the requirements for the competencies formed by the student as a result of studying the corresponding cycle of disciplines, are put in the first place. The content content of the second (variable, or profile) half of the educational program becomes the prerogative of the university, to help which educational and methodological associations or other competent groups of experts should create indicative (recommended) "exemplary basic educational programs" in specific areas of training.

Such a principle of building a standard will allow universities to develop new educational programs taking into account the needs of the local (regional) labor market, scientific and educational traditions, their own methodological developments, innovations, etc. And this, in turn, will lead to a variety of educational programs on the territory of the Russian Federation. It also includes the possibility of creating programs compatible with European ones.

Speaking about the fate of education, both in the world and in our country, one cannot ignore the difficulties and negative aspects of the introduction of international education associated with the Bologna system.

A decade and a half has passed since the European states began to implement the Bologna Declaration. It is a long time for the accumulated experience to allow a sober look at the results of this grandiose experiment. As it turned out, in practice, the implementation of the Bologna concept of education revealed pitfalls in its implementation, and today there are many voices that vehemently reject it. A cursory excursion to the Internet is enough to verify this, for example:

It can be said without exaggeration that the damage from the introduction of the Unified State Examination in secondary school and bachelor's and master's programs in the system of higher education is generally recognized. Blind copying of the Bologna system led to a significant decrease in the quality of training, primarily of the country's engineering personnel. It got to the point that after the bachelor's degree, university graduates need to finish their education at work. We have to adopt the practice of the West, where leading manufacturing companies such as General Electric, Westinghouse, Boeing, Airbus, etc. were forced to follow this path. But there could be no other result.

Georgy Shibanov. Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the Russian Federation.

Or: “Imitation of the West began in Russia a long time ago, quite a long time ago. Suffice it to recall the dispute between Westerners and Slavophiles. By the end Soviet period An absolute example of the quality of life has established itself in the life of the country - an ultra-wealthy Western businessman. And, of course, the Western model of education was taken as the basis for educational reforms. On the one hand, what's wrong - to take and adopt all the best. However, imagine that your child is constantly adopting a style of behavior, clothing style, leisure interests, and other distinctive features your friend or friends. In this case, the symptoms are on the face. It is reasonable to ask a child - "Do you have your own opinion, what do you like best and what suits you best?". If you remember the goals of the Bologna process, namely the standardization of education in a small Europe, in which after one or two hours by train you get to another country that used to have its own educational standards unlike other ones, you begin to understand foreigners with their opinion. And their opinion is this: we did it out of extreme necessity, so that a graduate of the University of Austria could work in Germany, and a graduate of the University of Portugal - in Spain, and why did you change your system of higher education? Ignoring the question - "Why do critics of reforms in higher education so often turn to the Soviet era?" Let's return to this time again. At that time, schools provided primary and compulsory secondary education, colleges taught simple professionals in their field, technical schools produced good technical specialists, universities provided the highest possible education, after which one could exchange one's highest qualification. What picture are we seeing now? From a conversation on the street with a friend: - I graduated from the Pedagogical University, higher education as a geographer, I work in the field information technologies. I want to learn how to program well. Where should I go for a second education in computer science - to a bachelor's or a master's degree?

Wait, by some estimates, more than half of the world's software is written in India. This country has a huge number of IT firms that are outsourced by large Western companies. How does it happen for them? It's simple - after school, young people go to college, where they learn to program for two years. After two years of study, they become professional programmers and can earn a lifetime programming. No university is needed here.

Thus, a bachelor's degree is already a mandatory requirement for all cashiers, computer operators, sales managers, and sometimes even for nannies and cleaners, a requirement of a competitive environment. The relationship of knowledge and other competencies with immediate future activities, both in the direction of training and specialization, and in terms of the level of education, is weak. And this is already a symptom, albeit not the most disturbing.

V.I., a domestic recognized authority in this area, also writes about the problems associated with the introduction of international education. Baidenko, see. The author cites the testimonies of foreign researchers of the Bologna process about the difficulties of its implementation, for example:

“The concern is that learning programs become inflexible and more compressed, leaving no room for creativity and innovation. In this regard, complaints are not uncommon that the programs of the first cycle (bachelor's degree. - VB) squeeze too many units from the previous, longer degree programs. In addition, the huge time spent on reforming forces many representatives of the teaching staff to limit their research activities, which negatively affects the quality of their teaching, etc.

V.I. Baidenko writes in the same place: “The educational process, guided from within by the power flow of its student-centered orientation, will lead to the building up of “capital of competencies” among graduates of domestic universities. In fact, the design of educational outcomes and their achievement and demonstration by students will be a kind of cathartic experience for the entire academic community. These innovations will inevitably demand more advanced educational technologies, educational environments, types and types of activities of teachers and learning activities of students, procedures and assessment tools aimed at assessing competencies. The upcoming shift in the educational practice of our higher education should be carried out in a fairly long time, as evidenced by the experience of even the most “advanced” universities in Europe, and certainly with the most careful retention of those traditions of domestic didactics of higher education, which in essence are in harmony with the new Bologna concepts of higher education. education. It must be admitted, however, that this shift will take place in the absence both in Russia and abroad of a coherent and technologically correctly formed didactics of a competency-based approach.

In our press and on Internet sites, there are many voices in defense of the “old Soviet education that was, etc.” and sharply negatively speaking about the achieved experience of introducing “foreign innovations” in our country. Apparently, as always in such cases, the truth is in the middle: without completely throwing overboard the many years of pedagogical experience of our past, still move forward, adopting foreign experience, using its positive results.

The Leuven Communiqué adopted at the Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education states that “… not all goals have been fully achieved, their full and proper implementation at the European, national and institutional levels will require serious commitment and increased momentum after 2010.” (item 7). At the same time, the ministers declared “their full commitment to the goals of the European Higher Education Area” (para. 4), and also that “the goals set in the Bologna Declaration and the strategies developed in subsequent years remain valid today” (p. 7).(…) The Bologna Process Monitoring Working Group was tasked with developing an action plan for the period up to 2012 to advance the priorities identified in the Leuven Communiqué. The priorities include: “the social dimension of higher education: equality in admission to and completion of higher education; lifelong learning as a mission of higher education institutions; „employability of university graduates; "student-centered focus educational process and learning; „unity of education, research and innovation; international cooperation in the field of higher education.”

In 2010, there was a "heroic" work to create a draft of a new law "On Education". The first version of the project did not withstand any criticism and was sent for revision. But the question arises: why, in general, is it necessary to correct what is disastrous for Russian education?

From December 1, 2010 to February 1, 2011, the finalized draft law was put up for public discussion on the Internet. The first thing that struck me was the volume, 240 pages, a medium-sized novel. Well, not "War and Peace", but "Fathers and Sons", not from Turgenev, of course. Why is there a novel, a draft law contrived to surpass even the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. In the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, there are 48,000 less printed characters (a computer is without (c) passionate in counting characters)! Imagine: the list of all crimes committed by Russians, with their definitions, punishments, etc., is smaller than the draft law on education! And in fact, a significant part of its text could be presented in two articles:

Article 1 The Ministry of Education and Science can do anything if it wants to.

Article 2. For those who do not understand, see Article 1.

The concrete embodiment of these grandiose plans in the field of education is known as the "Bologna process", which started in 1988, when the so-called "Universal Charter of the Universities" was adopted, proclaiming completely harmless things - the autonomy and equality of universities, as well as the inextricable link between educational and research processes.

But the potential of the document was appreciated by the European neo-liberals, who immediately took control of the process into their tenacious hands. Under their strict guidance, the emphasis placed in the "Charter" gradually shifted. While maintaining the general benevolent professorial tone, the concepts of “mobility of citizens with the possibility of their employment for the general development of the continent” and “competitiveness of the European system of higher education”, as well as the idea of two-stage education (joint statement of the European Ministers of Education, 1999) became key.

The mobility of the labor force, which should be ensured by the standardization of training programs and knowledge assessment (the former "equality and cooperation of universities"), is extremely important in a global market. Without it, it is impossible to freely move production to regions of “economically favored” (cheap labor and low social and labor guarantees), as well as the movement of capital from industry to industry in pursuit of higher profits. Both require the ability to quickly and without retraining (or with minimal retraining), i.e. at no additional cost, recruit a sufficient number of qualified employees at any time and in any place. The competitiveness of educational services in translation from politically correct to intelligible means:

The transformation of educational institutions into full-fledged capitalist enterprises, producing the most popular goods with minimal costs.
Decrease in wages, cancellation of scholarships, reduction of the material base, closing of "unprofitable" faculties and, most importantly, tuition fees. "Nothing extra".

Under this unspoken motto, higher education is divided into two cycles: undergraduate and graduate.

In 2003, Russia officially joined the Bologna process. Everyone knows about the zeal worthy best use with which our government aspires to the WTO. results during domestic politics- on the face.

In 1997, 2002, 2005, an agreement on loans for the modernization of education was signed between the Government of the Russian Federation and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The strategy for the development of education included: the weakening of state influence and the orientation of education to the requirements of the labor market. Here are some of the IBRD's priority recommendations: “close pedagogical institutes”; "close vocational schools"; enter “per capita financing of schools”; “do not increase the share of spending on higher or secondary vocational education in total GDP”; "eliminate" the injustice and inefficiency of the examination system.

According to the recommendations of the IBRD, the school should become a tool in the fight against morality and spirituality in Russia. It was proposed to establish "minimum standards of citizenship", which were reduced by the authors of the report to "the ability to read maps correctly, to explain in a foreign language, to correctly fill out tax returns ... this list may also include the ability to perceive Russian art and literature, as well as tolerance for other social groups".

In December 1999, the Center for Strategic Research was established on the basis of the HSE. G. Gref became its president, E. Nabiullina became its vice president. In 2001, on the initiative of Yaroslav Kuzminov, the husband of E. Nabiullina, the Russian Public Council for the Development of Education was created. In 2004, Ya. Kuzminov, rector of the Higher School of Economics, presents a report on improving the structure of education in Russia. The three most important principles of education - universality, free of charge and fundamental nature - were subjected to a complete revision as unprofitable. According to Kuzminov, our country is too educated: “... 98.6% of teenagers aged 16 study in impoverished Russia,more is spent on secondary education than on higher education..

By 2010, a number of measures were implemented to reform Russian education:

40 pedagogical institutes have been closed;
The system of vocational schools is actually destroyed;
The Russian school is already moving towards “minimum standards of citizenship”;
The unfair” examination system was replaced by the Unified State Examination.

In 2003, the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation conducted audits of the effectiveness of public spending in the implementation of IBRD projects. As is clear from the Bulletin of the SP RF for 2008, “ for the entire period of using borrowed funds in the field of education, the Russian side did not evaluate the effectiveness of any of the IBRD projects”. I note that the repayment and servicing of loans was carried out at the expense of the federal budget.

In 2001, the Ministry of Education "had" to spend all its funds on the introduction of the Unified State Exam, GIFO (State Named Financial Obligations) to ensure multi-channel financing of educational services, restructuring rural schools, etc. At the same time, according to the materials of the Accounts Chamber, Russian Academy education from the development of the main directions of development of education was actually removed: "the development of scientific projects was entrusted to organizations ... that do not have the scientific potential necessary for such a level of development." According to the materials of the Accounts Chamber, all educational experiments were carried out with numerous legislative violations (Civil Code, Tax Code, Budget Code, etc.).

Education reform is one illegal experiment for which no one is responsible, this is what Russian reformers are trying to hush up all the time. But on the other hand, the amounts invested by the IBRD in Russian education ended up in the “right” hands.

This reform will shake up the entire education system, from preschool education to universities. Already at the school level, the first stage of social division will take place. The level of education of children will depend entirely on the availability of money in the pockets of their parents.

How will this look in practice?

Higher education will basically become paid. This happened due to inclusion in the Bologna process, training was divided into predominantly paid bachelor's degree (3-4 years) and exclusively paid master's degree. Also due to the general reduction without (with) paid budget places and other state guarantees, due to the growth of the total cost of education in major cities in the best universities of the country (cost of living, connection with home, etc.).

The point is to destroy the type of higher education that has developed in Russian culture over 300 years. Our universities produced specialists adequate to our natural, cultural and economic reality. Now they will become inadequate. The Russian education system has always been the envy of Western scientific circles. The world scientific community cannot be deceived. Scientists all over the world at all times paid tribute to the highest potential of the Russian scientific school. Both the European royal courts and the democratic clans of bourgeois America hunted for Russian minds. The intellect of the nation is, perhaps, the only thing that our country managed to preserve even in the years of difficult hard times. It is thanks to the intellect that Russia has always been the greatest power in the world.

General secondary education is prepared for the introduction of paid education in high school.

The developers of federal state educational standards (FSES) identified six subject groups.

The first group is the Russian language and literature, as well as the native language and literature;
The second group - foreign languages;
The third group - mathematics and computer science;
The fourth group is the social sciences;
Fifth group - natural sciences;
The sixth is art or a subject of choice.

In each of the groups, according to the authors of the standard, the student will be able to choose one or two subjects, but there are three subjects for which variations will be impossible - the courses "Russia in the world", life safety and physical education will be mandatory for everyone. Thus, the number of subjects in the upper grades studied by the student will be reduced from 16-21 to 9-10. From now on, the school disappears as a multidimensional, main public institution for the development and formation of the child's personality, the school becomes a kind of market appendage for the provision of educational services to the population.

Net preschool institutions will continue to decline. Full-fledged programs of preschool education (nurseries and kindergartens) will be smoothly translated into various kinds of fragmented programs, such as services for temporary stay centers for children, etc. The cost of preschool education will rise significantly.
The same thing as with pre-school education will happen with additional general education (palaces of creativity, child development centers, etc.) and rural schools.
Purposefully and cynically, the system of creative schools, colleges, universities is falling apart. Musical and art schools are equated with the standards of additional general education, and educational institutions are trying to drag them into the Bologna process and divide actors and musicians into bachelors and masters. According to the logic of the Ministry of Education and Science, it turns out that the skill of an actor does not depend on talent, but on the number of years spent at the university. I studied for five years - perhaps for the role of Hamlet, and if four years - sorry, you can’t rise above Kolobok in a provincial theater.
The Russian school ceases to be unified and finally stratifies in two directions:
a) a narrow stratum of schools and universities for the "rich" and a mass school for the "poor";
b) for schools and universities in metropolitan areas, as well as in non-subsidized regions and educational institutions in other regions and cities.
At all levels of education, from preschool to higher education, due to the reduction of educational places, there is a significant reduction in teaching and service personnel.
General education - the basis of the reproduction, development and basic security of the country - has become tied to the results of the test unified exam (USE). As a result, the fundamental nature of general education has been destroyed, which makes it possible to form higher abilities (thinking, understanding, imagination) and other basic characteristics of consciousness and thinking for the individual.
The degradation of all “environments” surrounding the sphere of education is sharply increasing: scientific, cultural, advanced industrial (such as mechanical engineering, high-tech, etc.). In science, for example, a sharp reduction in the number of organizations and scientists is accompanied by a complete erosion of the status of scientific activity and the identification of science with any other, primarily commercial and trading activity.
The sphere of education will finally be tied to the “market”, i.e. to the existing level of development of industry and the social sphere. From the sphere of "production of the future" education turns into the sphere of "service of the present". World - class education will become inaccessible to the majority of the country 's population . In general, not only will there be no improvement in the quality of Russian education, another systemic failure will occur, degradation will take on an accelerated and irreversible character. The Russian school will become colonial, and Russia will become a third world country, a "banana republic", where bananas are our northern oil and gas. Behind the reforms stands a very definite image of Russia in the 21st century. And this is not an image of a world power, to the size and scale of which Russia should, obviously, curtail its power.

In total, over 10,000 comments and remarks were received during the two-month discussion of the draft law “On Education”.

Leonid Ivanovich Volchkevich - professor at Moscow State Technical University N.E. Bauman, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Honored Worker of the Higher School of the Russian Federation, in the article “A bag of instructions with a hidden bomb” (http://www.ng.ru/education/2011-02-01/8_zakon.html) says: “The first impression of the text of the draft law “On Education”, specifically Chapter 15 “Higher Education”, is exorbitant bloat, an abundance of self-evident and insignificant provisions, at the level of departmental instructions; just declarative, without semantic load. Why, for example, at the level of the law of the Russian Federation, to chew on the long-established procedures for extending the term of graduate school? If the authors of the draft law set out to reduce the regulation of higher education to the smallest detail, I propose the following addition: “Students are required to come to class in shoes and wipe them at the entrance.”

Jokes aside, the more carefully you read the texts of ch. 15, the more confidence grows that all this verbosity is a proven way to hide the most important between the lines. I cannot get rid of the feeling that in the texts of Ch. 15 hidden at least two "bombs" that can undermine the national higher education.

Bomb number one. Today there are about 600 public universities in the country with federal management and funding. However, Articles 133 and 135 directly state that only three categories remain under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation: 1) Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov and St. Petersburg State University; 2) federal universities; 3) national research universities with total number about fifty specific universities. What is the fate of the rest? Molchok.

True, in further texts one can “catch” such terms as “regional and municipal educational institutions”. But in ch. 15 - not a word about their status, organization, funding, quality assurance of training, etc., as is done for the mentioned three categories. Should it be understood that the state simply leaves 90% of the current state universities to the mercy of local authorities, from governors to village chairmen?

There is not a word in the law on the responsibility of regional and local authorities. As a result, after a period of stagnation and degradation, the current state universities may cease to exist or be transformed into commercial "offices for the sale of university diplomas." The unified state system of higher education, which was the pride of the Soviet country, authoritative throughout the world, will be “blown up”.

Bomb number two. Article 131 implies the legal equality of two-level (bachelor-master) and one-level (specialist) systems of higher education. Both have advantages and disadvantages, reasonable scope. So, a two-level system (colloquially - "bologna"), apparently, is rational for scientific specialties. And for technical ones, this is a sure means of strangulation. Since it is impossible to train a high-class designer, technologist, operator in 3.5-4 years, especially for the defense industries. This has been said and written so many times, and with evidence and examples, that I simply do not want to repeat myself. By the way! The deaf response silence of the Ministry of Education and Science cannot be interpreted otherwise than tacit agreement with criticism, apparently, there is nothing to say in response.

The draft law is silent about the main thing - who will have the right to choose educational trajectories for specific universities and specialties. In reality, everything can be in the power of nameless bureaucrats-managers who are not responsible for anything. The authors of the draft law "On Education" follow the beaten path. In 2006, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted the Forest Code, according to which the state threw off its worries about the country's greatest national wealth - forests. One of the results is last summer's national disaster. Will it not turn out that in a few years the broad masses of the people will realize that they have been excommunicated from high-quality higher education, and therefore from opportunities for worthy work and a worthy life. And then the country will blaze so that last year's fires will seem like the flickering of a candle.

And here is what Vasily Vashkov, head teacher of a Moscow school, writes about the draft law “On Education” (http://newsland.ru/news/detail/id/626967/cat/42/): “We have before us a draft law, which, no doubt, will be adopted and according to which we, starting from January 1, 2013, will have to live. I do not pretend to a full-fledged analysis, I will only allow some comments on the bill.

Article 8 The state ensures the realization of the right of everyone to education by creating an education system and appropriate socio-economic conditions .

What conditions? Will we raise wages or switch to subsistence farming? Will everyone be given a fountain pen or a laptop? Will they be sent to study in a barn or in a palace? Nothing concrete either here or further. Continuous declarations: the state guarantees, provides, promotes... What specifically guarantees, what provides, what does it promote?

Articles 10-14.

Five articles on education management, listing the powers of a variety of bodies. It turns out that OU (governing bodies) can command EVERYTHING! Almost three thousand words about authority, and NOT ONE ABOUT DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES!

Article 22. Experimental and innovative activities in the field of education.

I don’t know about universities, but this is the most shameful thing that exists in schools today! Ten years ago there was no such thing. Quite rightly, it was believed that the work of a teacher in its essence is a constant search, an experiment. This is true: there are no two identical children, two identical classes and two identical lessons. But in the late 90s, this normal activity of the teacher began to be driven into official, bureaucratic, ugly forms. Excess funding, concentrated in the hands of officials, has led to the creation of countless experimental platforms, meaningless and stupid, generating only a wave of accountability and justifying the need for the existence of a host of bureaucratic posts. To date, many schools are involved in 3 - 5 sites at the same time. It is very, very worth it...

At a meeting in February 2010, the head of one of the districts of Moscow announced the amount spent by the district on this type of activity: 150 million rubles in 2009! At that moment, it seemed to me, she herself was frightened by the named figure. There are 10 districts in Moscow. 1.5 billion down the drain! With per capita funding, this is money for the education of 50,000 children during the year! But this is the number of schoolchildren in a city with a population of 400-500 thousand people! Now there is nothing to fear, it will all become legal.

Article 28. Management of an educational organization.

The sole executive body of an educational organization is the head of the educational organization ...

All other vague discussions about collegiate bodies (council, teachers' council...) without defining the powers of these very bodies are just a fig leaf covering up the shame of the absence of even a hint of democratization of management.

Article 31 Competence, rights, duties and responsibilities of the educational organization.

An educational organization does have rights and competencies, but the draft law interprets them in a very peculiar way, in fact, all of them, one way or another, come down to what the organization must DO, that is, to its duties. All in all,« she has the right to POW." As for the responsibility that the bodies listed in Articles 10-14 are deprived of, it is entrusted to the educational organization to the fullest extent. She is responsible not only for what she did herself, but also for what these bodies directed.

Chapter 5 Pedagogical, managerial and other employees.

The law establishes the need for these workers to meet the qualification requirements provided for by the Unified qualification handbook. Everything would be fine until you read what this manual requires. The director and the head teacher, for example, should not have a pedagogical, but a managerial education, the teacher should know the theory of management, be able to use browsers, but there are only three words about knowledge of their subject:« fundamentals of general theoretical disciplines...»

In fact, the law, together with the reference book, turns the school into an emasculated bureaucratic structure that has lost its original meaning.

If this is the state policy in the field of education, and not disclosed in Article 9, then its goal is the destruction of the school.

Article 73. Licensing of educational activities .

Hooray! Finally a perpetual license! But will it make life easier? I doubt. A few years ago, the procedure for attesting schools was officially abolished. But they rejoiced early! This procedure was simply quietly introduced into the state accreditation procedure. Officials were not reduced, they did not even bother to change the plates in the GSLA. So it hung two years after the cancellation of the procedure, the sign« Head of the department of attestation of schools. Will this happen again?

Article 74 State accreditation...

Good article. Accreditation for a school for twelve years is great, although why not an indefinite one, like a license? Removes a lot of bureaucratic insanity. But other articles make it easy to revive it.

Article 75 State supervision.

God, the same song again! The last (responsible) is always the educational organization. But what about those structures that are legally defined in articles 10-14? And if the organization followed their instructions? A year ago, during the licensing of our school, in response to the comments of experts, I repeatedly referred to direct instructions from the authorities (management and methodological center), to which I received an unambiguous answer:« By law, they can only recommend to you, and you decide. School Responsibility. It is, of course, so, but, I disobey these« recommendations”, it would not seem enough. Accounting, for example, refuses to fund a curriculum unless it is« agreed ”(read - approved) with the methodological service, which is even an advisory body under the current law.

I am afraid that the new law will not improve the situation. Yes, we agree to answer, we agree! But only for your work, and not for following other people's instructions! The project prepares the widest field for the manifestation of bureaucratic voluntarism.

Try not to participate in educational activities- you do not comply with the law, and if classes are disrupted as a result of participation, you are also violating. Because of the events, lessons are disrupted, but they have to be paid for - two violations at once! Just like in the old movie:« The whites will come and plunder, the reds will come and plunder... Where can the peasant go?”

BUT« rob” education for all and sundry. For example, the story of the certification of workplaces, carried out on the basis of the order of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation dated August 31, 2007 No. 569. According to this order, for each workplace(a teacher's desk, for example) a bunch of pieces of paper should be drawn up. In practice, only specially created firms could do this. The cost of certification of one place cost about 2000 rubles. The school needs to certify about 50 such places. About 100 thousand rubles in cash. There are more than 1500 schools in Moscow. According to the most conservative estimates - 150 million.

Where did the schools get this money? (They are not in the estimate!) Let's keep silent about this. I can only say one thing: any director who has paid for certification can be safely fired for various financial violations. And they all paid for it.

What about kindergartens? What about universities? Colleges? The proposed draft law does not in the least protect against such robbery.

Chapter 9. Economics and Finance.

In principle, it’s normally conceived, it’s good that additional funding is provided for small rural schools, but there is no specifics, everything is at the mercy of the local bureaucracy, which today considers any expenditure of public funds that is not related to personal enrichment to be wasteful.

Additional funding for their development programs - the idea, it would seem, is a good one. But what happened in the process of its approbation within the framework of the national project« Education”, inspires, to put it mildly, some concerns. Getting the notorious million was instantly turned into a kind of competition between educational bureaucratic structures. The most advanced schools, and not the most needy, were nominated as participants. Getting a grant depended solely on how« beautifully ”the development program was written and how solid the rest of the papers looked. The evaluation of these programs was carried out by pedagogical theorists and officials. The requirements for the programs strongly resembled those for solid research papers or doctoral dissertations. For the sake of victory, some schools simply hired the right ones.« specialists" in writing scientific treatises. As a result, the costs could exceed the grant. I am afraid that this law, which interprets this issue in a very vague way, will make it possible to turn this disgrace into the norm.

Article 88 Features of compensation for damage caused by poor-quality education.

Education is not yesterday's stew with sour sauce and subsequent diarrhea. Education cannot be GIVE, it can only be TAKE! The article is categorically harmful, a tribute to legal casuistry, an imitation of Americans distraught on this basis.

Chapter 10 Preschool education.

Somehow quite modestly, only a hundred lines. But the problem is burning! Kindergartens are sorely lacking, about 30 percent of today's children under the age of 7 will come to school without getting into kindergarten. The salary in kindergartens is not just small, but humiliatingly beggarly. The Moscow kindergarten, where my son goes, is looking for a nanny for 0.75 rates, with a salary of 5,000 rubles! And what is happening in the regions?! What, the drafters of the draft law do not even suspect about the existing problems? Or are they not going to solve them? Or did they only see children in pictures?

Chapter 11 General education.

It's funny, already in the third paragraph he signs in which cases it is possible to leave the child for the second year. Right after the phrase:« General education is compulsory.” Apparently, even for the drafters of the project, the causal relationship of these points is obvious. And what if this same fool, who, according to the law, must be left for the second year, according to Article 88 of the same law, accuses the school of giving him a poor-quality education? And who wants to deal with it? Probably, it was worthwhile to more clearly understand the responsibilities of students and their parents and replace the concept of compulsory general education with the right:« Any citizen of the Russian Federation has the right to receive free general education.

Chapter 12 Professional education.

« The priest missed the eggs when Easter passed, ”my grandmother used to say. Why did they tear everything apart so that now it can be rebuilt again? Where are you, UPC, where are you, highly professional masters, ready to teach children? However, it's good that you remembered.

Enough, perhaps, let me sum up some results:

In itself, the idea of a law on education is not bad, but it was probably not worth collecting everything into this law, inflating it to such a size.
There are a number of sensible, necessary articles, the urgent need for which has long been felt by educators.
The vast majority of articles are declarative in nature, something like« Statements of intent."
Financial issues are discussed without specifying any specific values.
The law is extremely« bureaucratic” (sorry for the new, clumsy term). Its adoption in its current form will not only not lead to a reduction in the apparatus and duplicating bureaucratic structures, but will give rise to a lot of new ones. This is a law written by officials for the convenience of officials.

All these shortcomings are generated, most likely, by the fact that practices were removed from the drafting of the law. Those who TEACH! The draft of the new law does not even try to touch upon the burning issues, well-known to practitioners:

The real quality of knowledge is of no interest to anyone, officials only need good reports confirming the success of their leadership.
Profile education has failed miserably, it can only work if the high school is separated - to create separate educational organizations with big amount different profiles. There is not even a word about it.
All the guarantees for teachers prescribed in the draft should be replaced by one - to recognize them as civil servants. (Who works for the state if not them?) Instead, they are reduced to the status of stupid executors of bureaucratic will.

There is another thing that is characteristic of our country - life is not according to laws, but according to concepts. For example, according to the law, even today Moscow schools sort of manage their own finances. According to concepts, this is done by centralized accounting departments. Before the New Year, the accounting departments of several districts announced that« I've run out of money, I'll have to cut something ... ". At the same time, most schools did not have overspending. Some kind of mystic:« Ugh! Your money is on fire! And you say the law ... "

Today, domestic education - from preschool education to higher education and science - most of all resembles the notorious "Trishkin's caftan". It's too late to patch: no matter where you poke - one continuous hole. Measures are required cardinal. The option proposed by the Government of the Russian Federation: the destruction of the education system as a social institution and the creation of a commercial institution under the same guise. Politically correct is called: "bringing the structure of the education system to meet the real needs of the economy". With this approach Russian schools, previously - "sovereign children", receive "freedom" to find their own source of funding. Free (c) paid education, proclaimed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, inevitably turns into paid education.

As soon as the state transfers education from the sphere of its primary social and political functions to the category of commercial services, it will collapse. And no investments and no foreign loans will be able to raise it. A moral default is much worse than an economic one, because after it there will be no one to raise.

Never, at any time, education was not a subject of sale and purchase. This is a debt that the older generation always repays to the younger generation for the loan that they, in turn, received from their fathers and grandfathers. And the destruction of this chain can have tragic consequences for all mankind.

Every person in our country has equal right to join in the greatest historical experience accumulated by the ancestors. And no official has the right to decide whether a child has the right to receive a decent education or not.

The main task of the state is to provide equal opportunities for obtaining the entire amount of knowledge for any citizen of the country. Therefore, the introduction of the concept of "educational services", for which a citizen must pay out of his own pocket, is a gross violation of human rights.

What are we seeing today?

For starters, preschool education ceases to be education as such. Classes are becoming a paid service, and speech therapists and psychologists are taken out of the state. Last summer, speaking about the problems with kindergartens, the President of the Russian Federation D. Medvedev for the first time uttered the words - "a group of supervision and care." This wording means that the Russian authorities are taking seriously the transformation of kindergartens into "storage chambers", where there is no place for education, intellectual or aesthetic development. There is no need for the state to educate smart citizens. Stupid people are easier to manage. The fact that, in addition to preparing children for school, kindergartens played a significant role in the liberation of a woman, giving her the opportunity to receive an education, work, and fulfill herself in society after the birth of a child, is suggested to be safely forgotten. Of course, childcare services will continue to be available, but on a commercial basis. This means that the blow will fall primarily on young families, single mothers, and female workers.

In secondary education, the curriculum will be significantly reduced. At the same time, all subjects “reduced” from the compulsory program will be introduced as paid electives. And if the parents want to give the child a good education, then they will be forced to fork out. The displacement of "peripheral" subjects from the curriculum will be accompanied by the introduction of profile education: high school students will have to focus on studying those subjects that will be useful to them for entering a university of a certain profile.

In the field of higher education, V. Putin outlined the direction of work in his time, when in his Address of 2004 he said that there were too many students in the country, and the state of education did not meet the requirements of the labor market.

National universities will train highly qualified specialists and managers of a wide profile. Mostly people from wealthy families will study here - since it is they who will be able to pay for both preparation for admission and education, which will not be cheap. Federal higher education institutions will form a layer of narrow-profile specialists. This category will become an alma mater for people from the middle strata, as well as for the Lomonosovs, who will be poor but capable. The third group of universities are “commercial firms” that sell not so much knowledge as diplomas to those who have not made it to free (with) paid places or cannot pay for their studies in a more prestigious institution, but want to have at least some kind of education.

Education is a means of revealing and developing a personality, so it should be given to everyone and to the maximum so that everyone can find their talent and develop it. Russian education for many centuries has evolved as an integral fundamental system of knowledge, formed on the basis of the classical approach. This means that knowledge has always been considered from the point of view of not teaching a person any practical actions, but forming him as a PERSONALITY. The breadth of the spectrum of knowledge is necessary for a person to understand his place in this world, to comprehend the essence of his existence on Earth. Only such a system of education can fill a person's life with moral meaning, make him a Creator.

The consequence of the education reform will not only be a drop in the quality of education, a sharp reduction in the opportunity for the majority to gain knowledge, and the prospect of cultural degradation of Russian society as a whole. Consolidating the relations of domination and subordination, social inequality and competitive market struggle "all against all", the ruling class objectively begins a historical movement back to those times when Knowledge, the ability to independently Think and Create was the privilege of the few.

If we are still people and want to maintain respect for ourselves, we cannot allow the government to consider itself as a consumable for the defective economic system it created, which has long since become obsolete all over the world, not like in Russia. The fight to maintain affordable education today is a fight for a better future against the new barbarism. And the outcome of this struggle can depend only on ourselves!

Many people think that once the law is passed, nothing can be done. In fact, if you look at the practice of legislation, changing laws, amending them, repealing some laws is an ordinary legislative process in which there is nothing supernatural. The developers of orders from the Ministry of Finance themselves say: “What can be expected from the order if it was prepared in an emergency order before the new year?! Now it will be finalized, numerous changes will be made, etc.”

We must remember that our passivity can play a cruel joke on us. You will not sit out of the budget reform, you will not fence yourself off. Only an active life position can help the cause. It is necessary to massively demonstrate to the authorities that we, the people, really do not want these reforms!

Usually we don't write much about government initiatives in education, but at the end of the year we decided to make a small chronicle of incidents on this front.

What's new happened over the past year in the relationship between the state and the educational sector? What reforms have begun or continue to be introduced in our schools and universities? We have identified 5 main points that are worth paying attention to.

1. Merger of universities into "core" universities

The Ministry of Education has set a course for the creation of a federal network of multidisciplinary universities: by 2020, it is planned to reduce the number of higher educational institutions by 40%.

The purpose of the reform is to concentrate education and science in network centers in order to improve the quality of training of specialists and collect enough resources for research work in each of them. So far, this is happening like this: the academic council of the regional university sends an appeal to the ministry, and there they finalize the merger plan and allocate the necessary budget.

Mergers and acquisitions have become one of the main educational trends in recent years. This year alone, a number of metropolitan and regional universities have merged (MSGU + MGGU, MATI + MAI, OGUM + OSU, etc.), although the reason for this may simply be a shortage of students.

And as part of the new reform, 15 universities are candidates for “core” universities, including Voronezh Technical University, Volgograd State University, Dagestan State and Technical Universities, Tyumen Oil and Gas University and others.

It is assumed that by 2020 we will have about 100 flagship universities throughout the country. Dmitry Livanov and Andrey Volkov have even identified this as the main structural reform in educational policy for the coming decades.

2. Merger of secondary schools

The process of merging schools and kindergartens into large-scale educational complexes began several years ago, and this year it also swept across the country. Most notably, it took place in Moscow, where out of 4,000 schools, 1,000 centers of a new type turned out.

In words, the reform was going to be carried out according to such successful models as the Tsaritsyno training center by Yefim Rachevsky, only this time the reform was often carried out ill-conceived, in a very short time, without taking into account the opinion of parents and only on the basis of the territorial location of the school, and not its level and characteristics.

By the beginning of the reform, there were about 60,000 schools across the country - now there are already 40,000. It is assumed that the main goal of the reform is to improve the quality of education in lagging schools, to strengthen them " material base”, to provide students with more special courses and additional opportunities.

But it is no less important that after the merger, school funding from the budget can be significantly reduced: instead of five directors' salaries, pay one, dismiss some of the staff, simplify bureaucratic control and make it more centralized.

3. Testing and gradual implementation of the teacher's professional standard

The professional standard of a teacher, approved back in 2013, is beginning to be applied in practice. Although its full introduction throughout the Russian Federation is planned only for 2017.

The point of the new standard is to replace obsolete qualification requirements, to standardize recruitment, to streamline the set of skills and abilities that any teacher should possess.

It is not yet clear whether something will change in teaching practice after the introduction of the standard, but it may affect the requirements for graduates of pedagogical universities. Often these requirements do not coincide with those specified in the standard - in terms of, for example, the legal aspects of education or the psychological knowledge and skills of the teacher.

4. Teaching a second foreign language in schools has become mandatory

From September 1 of this year, students from the 5th grade will be required to learn two foreign languages. Few people are ready for this reform yet, so it is being introduced in stages: schools need to find the right teachers, refine teaching methods and revise educational programs.

According to Dmitry Livanov, this reform “returns us to the best traditions of classical Russian school, and earlier gymnasium, education,” where indeed French or German were taught along with Latin - only the education itself was much more elitist.

The criticism is that the introduction of a second foreign language will reduce the teaching hours allocated to other subjects. Most schoolchildren leave general education institutions with a very poor command of even one foreign language (often even poorly knowing Russian), and the new reform may only make this situation worse.

Chinese is gradually becoming one of the options for which language to study - it is already being taught in some schools in Moscow, and there are even proposals to make it a compulsory subject.

5. Introduction of standard test papers from the 4th grade of school

An analogue of the State Final Attestation and the Unified State Examination may appear already in the elementary grades of the school. The Ministry of Education proposed to hold all-Russian verification work developed according to a single standard at the federal level. This practice can replace the so-called "intermediate assessment", the content of which is approved at the level of the school itself.

This year, tests of a new type in the Russian language, mathematics and the world around us have already been carried out in the 4th grade of some schools. In the near future, such “unified state exam preparation” may become a mandatory part of testing school knowledge in other subjects and in other grades, up to the 9th grade. Assignments will be the same type throughout the Russian Federation, but their verification will be carried out at the level of individual institutions.

As the head of Rosobrnadzor Sergey Kravtsov said, "we decided to focus on objectivity not only at the final exams, but throughout the entire training." Such a check should establish at what level, relative to a single standard, each school and each of its students is.

But for many, such standardization raises even more doubts than the USE itself: the requirements for students in different schools with different specializations are very different, and the educational system should take these differences into account.

Of course, we missed a lot about the relationship between power and education in the past year: for example, the introduction of uniforms for teachers in certain regions and sensational comparisons of grants with vacuum cleaners - but general trends can be seen from this brief review.

In the context of the budget deficit, the state is trying to reduce its spending: in education from January to September, they have already decreased by 10% compared to last year. And in 2016, according to some estimates, the reduction in costs (compared to 2012) will already be 36%, while spending on higher education will decrease by 22%.

The state seeks to streamline the educational system as much as possible, to make it more permeable to bureaucratic control. Therefore, the key words in almost all of these reforms are "standards" and "mergers".

But the adopted reforms, as a rule, turn into paperwork and do not bring the results that are announced in public.

As a result, there is a growing feeling that the average level of education in schools and universities is only declining, and the state is not pursuing any well-thought-out policy in this regard. At the same time, there is a widening gap between mainstream and "advanced" institutions (like the top 5-100 universities) that maintain higher teaching standards and demand more from students.

The desire for standardization and centralized control leaves little room for everything qualitative and different: as a result, we are left with separate exemplary institutions, separate excellent schools, excellent teachers and interesting local initiatives - and everything else.

Of course, here our attention was drawn to just a few of the typical things that happened this year between the state and the educational sphere. Maybe you see these trends in a different way? Share your opinion.

Sergeev Alexander Leonidovich
candidate of legal sciences.

Education is one of the most important spheres of public life. From its specific filling with various social institutions, academic disciplines, systems of methods for presenting and assimilating information, the structure of building educational institutions, the future of the people and the very direction of its spiritual and intellectual development strongly depend. That is why in all developed countries education is one of the main state functions, for the implementation of which huge material and human resources are annually spent.
A certain matrix is always inherent in the education system - a set of principles, institutional formations and energy-informational codes that determine its daily development and functioning. Its necessary renewal, carried out in harmony with all its other elements, can bring invaluable benefits to education, while at the same time its damage or rash artificial breaking can create catastrophic and irreversible consequences for it.
In December 2012 was adopted the federal law"On Education in the Russian Federation". While discussions were going on within the framework of this legislative initiative, there was hope that further steps would be taken by the state authorities to bring modern Russian education out of the difficult situation that has developed over the past 20 years. However, its final version showed that the negative accumulated by the educational system over the previous period is not only not removed, but is supplemented by other, extremely dangerous, innovations.
To begin with, we should turn to the origins of the problem under discussion. In the late 80s and early 90s, a flurry of publications swept across the country, which spoke of the "inefficiency" of the Soviet education system, where a person is allegedly taught "too much" and made him "unreasonably universal." The specified information background turned out to be very favorable for further destructive actions carried out by the Russian authorities in the educational sphere.
Before analyzing the current state of the Russian education system and its legal regulation, let's touch a little on the question of the effectiveness of the Soviet model. The myth of the poor quality of the Soviet educational matrix is successfully dispelled in the articles of the largest contemporary Russian social scientist S.G. Kara-Murza. In particular, they show that the Soviet school, including all educational levels, was organized according to the university principle, the main meaning of which is to teach a person to think globally, be able to solve various complex problems and navigate in a variety of life situations. It was the introduction of this educational approach into domestic life in the 20-30s that made it possible to qualitatively step forward in all sectors National economy and make a giant leap in social development.
The Western education system initially (starting from the era of bourgeois revolutions and subsequent modernization) was characterized by a system of “two corridors”, in which only a small percentage of the population receives university education, which in the future will have the opportunity to form a state-administrative elite. The rest of the population gets education of a mosaic type, within which a person is able in the future to perform only a certain set of narrowly defined functions, and to have a superficial and non-systemic idea of all other branches of knowledge.
The goal of many Western and Russian elite circles was the introduction in Russia of the so-called Bologna system, which makes it possible to break the previously existing matrix of university education. Moreover, in Russian conditions, the “second corridor” matrix has begun to be introduced for all universities without exception, which in the future threatens the country to remain even without the necessary elite educational layer that will be able to make socially important strategic decisions.
The breakdown of the domestic education system, carried out in the post-perestroika years, can be divided into 2 stages. The first of these was carried out in the 1990s, when chronic underfunding of the educational system began to take place and many blows were dealt to the moral foundations of Russian society, undermining respect for the teaching staff. The result of this was the departure of the majority of highly qualified employees from the secondary and higher schools. It should be especially noted that this loss turned out to be irreparable, since this set of professions was not and still is not popular among young people.
The second stage can be attributed to the 2000s, when the matrix of the domestic educational process itself began to be broken. This period should include the widespread introduction of the Unified State Examination (USE), the introduction of a two-stage system of education "Bachelor - Master", the creation of a point-rating system as a universal criterion for assessing students' knowledge, and many other additional innovations.
The underfunding of education in the 1990s and the destruction of its matrix in the 2000s led to catastrophic results. Year by year, both the level of graduates and the quality of education itself began to fall. As the Honored Teacher of Russia S.E. Rukshin, Russia is approaching the point of no return, and after some time it will be impossible for it to restore the positions in the educational sphere that it had two decades ago.
Let us briefly summarize the above and identify the main negative consequences of the education reform:

The fall in the social status of the teacher and lecturer. This was reflected both in the degree of respect of representatives of modern Russian society for this kind of work, its prestige, and in the level of remuneration and social guarantees of modern teachers and teachers. If in Soviet times the teaching staff was part of the highest social strata, then today the performance of even low-skilled work can bring much more money and a higher social position;
Bureaucratization of the education system. Despite the catastrophic decline in the quality of education, the number of officials in the departments that manage this area is only increasing year by year. Bureaucratization, however, is observed not only in the growth of the bureaucracy, but also in the quality of its work. Logics common sense says that if the state does not have the opportunity to provide financial support to young scientists and teachers at a decent level, then the only way to preserve the scientific community should be to create additional social lifts and simplify the path for talented young people to receive scientific degrees, positions and titles. Instead, we see more and more obstacles that arise in the way of defending doctoral and candidate dissertations, obtaining the titles of associate professors and professors, and many other negative phenomena.
Elimination of the centralized system of educational criteria and standards. The Soviet education system, throughout the entire historical period of its existence, was aware of the work of methodological councils, which carefully worked out the division of the educational process into specialties, individual academic disciplines, their hourly content, etc. To date, the cutting of teaching hours and the content of the subjects taught in each individual university is carried out chaotically, mainly based on the interests of certain departments or specific people occupying certain positions. The interests of future specialists and their need for certain knowledge are taken into account, as a rule, as a last resort, if taken into account at all. The same is observed at the level that decides on the creation or liquidation of certain universities. Of particular resonance was the autumn campaign initiated by our state-authoritative educational departments regarding the recognition of a part of domestic universities as "inefficient". The efficiency criteria for the existence of this or that institution of higher education, not only did they not have any centralized codification, they were also formulated by individual officials in such a way that they could never be adequately applied to an educational institution.
The introduction of the Unified State Examination (USE) as a means of admission to universities. The formulation of tasks in a test and tabular format, firstly, is hardly accessible to most children with a humanitarian style of thinking, and secondly, only the applicant’s memory or his training in one or another task format is really able to check. Creative talent, logical thinking, the ability to penetrate into the essence and essence of phenomena - the USE is not able to check all these qualities, but in practice these qualities are also harmful, as they prevent the applicant from completing a task that has a clear and specific template. It is not difficult to imagine what consequences this has for the formation of the modern generation of students.
Implementation of the "Bachelor-Master" system. The system of specialty that existed in Soviet times as a matrix for obtaining higher education included, as a rule, 5 years of full-time education and 6 years of part-time education. The undergraduate system introduced today in accordance with the Bologna Convention prescribes the transition to a four-year system of education. As a result, the basic training courses available in the educational program are cut to a minimum and are often set to teaching in the junior courses of the institute, which has a very significant effect on their assimilation by university students. Disciplines that have a special and narrow-profile character are either served interspersed with basic academic subjects, or have a fragmentary-mosaic character. Such an educational matrix naturally forms half-educated specialists who are unable to think globally or perform a variety of practical tasks. The situation is no better in the second stage of modern higher education - magistracy. As a rule, the specializations that undergraduates should subsequently follow are hastily invented within the framework of specialized departments, after which a certain system of special courses taught by other departments (and formulated by them) is “knocked out” for them. As a result, a certain chaotic discord "on a given topic" is created in the undergraduate's head. If we take into account that many undergraduates do not have a basic specialized education, the picture we describe becomes even more vivid.
Introduction of a point - rating system for assessing student performance. This measure, although not spelled out in the existing Russian legislation, is being very actively implemented by educational departments in studying proccess. In the absence of a unified centralized system for assessing the knowledge and progress of students (and such a system is hardly possible to develop), each educational institution the issue of scoring decides at its own discretion. In practice, a seminar session, which, by definition, should have discussions and creative discussions of the material covered, is rapidly turning into a “race for points”, when an individual student, afraid of being excluded from the session, tries to have time to say two words so that, do not let God, do not leave without the earned figure. Thus, the holding of seminars acquires a formalist character, in which the creative component is deliberately killed.

The Federal Law “On Education in the Russian Federation” that we are describing, which is in no way aimed at correcting the existing order of things, but on the contrary, fixing its key parameters, adds the following negative innovations to them:

liquidation of profile school education and its replacement by specialization by classes within regular schools. Ever since the Soviet era, graduates of specialized schools (physics, mathematics, etc.) often became prize-winners international olympiads, and later famous scientists who contributed to the development of domestic science. A profile class in an ordinary school is obviously not capable of giving a student even a tenth of the knowledge, skills and abilities that a student receives from the very first stage of a specialized school, where everything is imbued with a certain spirit and fine educational structure;
liquidation of the system of preschool education. The new law simply does not provide for it, which means that by-laws regulating this spectrum of education can simply be canceled at any time. Thus, children are deprived of another social institution, created earlier for their development with the help of collective gigantic labor.
liquidation of the system of doctoral education. The new law does not say anything about this stage of postgraduate education, and, according to the creators of the educational reform, over time, both candidates and doctors of science should be equated in status and transferred to the PhD index used in the scientific community of Western countries. How much this measure is capable of hitting the motivation of the work of today's scientific and pedagogical workers, who are already not spoiled by the attention of society and the state, can only be guessed at.

The foregoing clearly shows that the consistent application of modern legislation on education will not only not contribute to the withdrawal of this sphere from the severe crisis it is experiencing, but, on the contrary, can make these trends irreversible. Based on this, society as a whole and the modern scientific and pedagogical community as a part of it, which is at the forefront of defense, should take an extremely active position in order to change the recently adopted law, as well as government policy in the educational field in general.
In this regard, alternative developments of the normative content are extremely interesting, which, if applied, can positively affect the educational sphere. The draft law "On public education", proposed for adoption in the State Duma by the Communist Party faction in the fall of 2012, should be considered. Without completely negating the decisions in the educational sphere made over the past 20 years, it, nevertheless, turned out to be in many respects in tune with modern realities. We list the obvious advantages and benefits of this document in comparison with the current legislation:

the project consolidates the existence of a system of both preschool and doctoral education, as well as guarantees for their functioning;
both students and teachers are assigned a wide range of social guarantees and other measures of social protection;
the draft law pays great attention to the working conditions of the teaching staff. So, in accordance with it, the level of classroom load cannot exceed 18 hours per week when implementing general educational programs and 720 hours per year in the implementation of professional educational programs;
a separate plus of the bill is the provision on remuneration of teachers. According to the bill, the salary of teachers should exceed the average salary of workers in industrial sectors of the corresponding subject of the Russian Federation, and the salary of the teaching staff of universities should not only exceed, but not less than 2 times. The draft law establishes an allowance of 8,000 rubles for the degree of a candidate of sciences, and 15,000 thousand rubles for a doctor of sciences.
The draft law provides for the coexistence of two educational systems - both one-stage - specialty, and two-stage - bachelor's degree - master's degree. The applicant himself is endowed with the right to decide what education to receive and which way to go further.
The bill ruled out the possibility of holding the Unified State Examination in a number of humanitarian subjects. For example, in literature, an applicant is offered the choice of either writing an essay or answering orally, and the disciplines "history" and "social science" will have to be taken exclusively orally.

As can be seen from the above, the adoption of this bill and its further implementation could solve many problems and give impetus to overcoming the crisis of modern domestic educational system. Recognizing, however, the exceptional usefulness of the draft law for the present moment, it is necessary to indicate the need for a complete change in the educational matrix of today. For the full development of Russia, its revival as a great power and one of the world leaders, in the future it is necessary to completely stop copying Western models and uncompromisingly abandon the Bologna system. Russia needs a full-fledged education of the Soviet type, equipped with last word scientific and technological progress, with the return of teachers and teachers to the highest strata of society and the laying of the university foundation at all levels and stages of the domestic educational machine.
Education creates the future. The functioning of the educational matrix and its real content to a large extent determine what our children will be like and what awaits our country tomorrow. We express hope and faith that the modern community of intellectuals will not be indifferent to the processes taking place in this area and will be able to turn the ship of modern education on the right path.

What else to read

Ancient divination on wax and water: the rules of the ceremony and the meanings of the figures The most famous and widespread prediction is wax divination. It has come to us since ancient times and still...

Master class for making amulets with your own hands The best amulet with your own hands The amulet acts as a kind of protection for the astral shells of a person. Its functions include attracting good luck or money, and ...

Good and bad interpretations of a dream about a fire In reality, the revelry of the fiery element in sane people causes instinctive fear (excluding pyromaniac arsonists) ....