New Russian Minister of Education Olga Vasilyeva told about the main priorities of her work, about Unified State Examination (USE), school essays and effectiveness of the Russian education system in her first big interview.
— Having taken the ministerial office, you told about your priorities right away – it’s teachers, their well-being and making their profession prestigious. Today, Russia is developing a national system of teachers’ growth, this purpose was set by the President in June this year, but it was not fulfilled. Why is this process taking so long? What new jobs are going to emerge at schools and when?
Photo: © Mikhail Pochuyev/TASS
— At the moment, there is only a teacher’s rank for all the teachers at school; in fact, it is the only one in the profession, which prevents career progress according to experts. I think, there is some sense in it.
We are now discussing an opportunity to introduce a graded rank system for teachers, depending on difficulty of performed duties, responsibility and functions – they will be described in professional standards. We are now talking about making three grades: leading teacher, senior teacher and teacher. All the grades are going to include the duties, which can be used for every of these grades and they are now scrupulously discussed now.
It is a difficult question and at the Russia Teachers’ Meeting in August teachers appealed to the Head of Russian Government Dmitry Medvedev for more time to work on professional standards and they had such a consent. I think, the system will be introduced before January 1, 2018 or maybe later – the professional standards are to be introduced gradually until 2020 and the work will be continued.
— Two years ago, after a five-year pause, graduation essay returned to schools. Now it is graded in a simplified way, as passed/failed. Are grades going to return?
— Yes, and I think it will be done quite fast, in three or four years. Meanwhile, schools should get used to a thought it is their duty to give grades for essays. It will also make the work of higher education institutions easier – now they have to invite experts if they want to count essays during their enrollment campaigns.
— Despite external tolerance of the society to USE, discussions about it are still going on. Some people continue offering to cancel this system, what do you think, are there any disadvantages?
— I want you and those, who are going to read the interview, to understand only one thing and I am going to say it right away. We are an extraordinary country, because we cope with very difficult tasks in short periods of time.
This kind of examinations has been tested in the European countries for years, we have only had ten years for testing and are already drawing the first conclusions.
It is a great social blessing – enrolling at a prestigious university became possible by working hard at school and at the same time, a child’s domicile does not matter.
We’re certainly going to continue USE, but I’d like to underline that there is always room for perfection. But I do not think there are going to be any crucial changes, we are going to refine what we have and reduce the test part. And I want to repeat that I’ll do all I can to stop drilling in USE after lessons, because if the programme is finished, there is no need to be afraid of the examination.
— Open government had a suggestion to make schools publish average USE points…
— USE should not put any pressure, the work of schools and teachers should not be estimated by how USE was passed. I’ll explain my point. Take, for example, physics and mathematics schools – the children there had already been chosen to study relevant subjects and it was clear that the results were going to be higher.
We also have northern nomad schools, inclusive schools and other types of educational institutions, where the fact of working with children itself is much more important than its formal grading. The question is what you do and what you get as a result of your activities. A child can show a low result, but the efforts made by both sides may be atomic.
I think that if we start publishing USE ratings, different schools, depending on their major subjexts, may end up at the middle or even the end of these lists, which may fully contradict with reality.
I am sure that the people, studying the ratings, will not get into every single situation and with such an approach it is very difficult to see the broad picture.
— What if it will be done outside of general ratings?
— USE is not a criterion for evaluating the work done at school, I am emphasizing it once more. It will not be able to picture the state of school today and if so, it is not to be done at all, it is just not right. Schools should develop their own models of self-examination.
— Is the school course “Basics of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics” going to be widened?
— I’ll simply answer that according to previous experience in other subjects, there is nothing permanent, everything changes and should be changing for the best. It is clear, there will be changes in this course, as well, and it will affect text books and curricula.
I’ll draw an example – 20-30 years ago such a course was hard to imagine in a school curricula at all.
We also should know what the efficiency factors for this course are. We are now working on creation of such criteria. First and utmost, the course is aimed at forming a person’s moral and cultural values, so its analysis should be multidimensional. It is a very interesting course and what is the most important – it is one of the courses aimed at forming a personal identity.
— When the first results of such an analysis will be visible?
— We are now speaking about a very subtle matter. It is one thing to calculate something mathematically, but an entirely different thing is to sow a seed and to raise it. It is hard to even create evaluating criteria, so the time period may linger.
— In winter the ministry announced creating a scheme of monitoring colleges’ effectiveness like that one, which analyzes work of higher education institutions. When are its results going to be presented?
— It is now being prepared. This information will be published on December 1, 2016 at the latest on the Ministry of Education’s website. This rating will allow graduates, choosing professional education, to make a clearer choice. We are now collecting all the required information in organisations, but we are also going to follow the results of our colleges’ students at regional and national WorldSkills Russia.
By the way, one more novelty in professional education will emerge soon and it will be connected with educational process, with qualification exam in particular. Its task is to show what a person can do, so he is to pass both theory and practice. I can proudly add that this year we chose one in 6-10 candidates for college studies, there were almost 700 thousand candidates in general.
— Are any colleges going to be closed or reorganized as a result of the monitoring?
— Every single situation will be considered separately, they are under my personal control, because I think this sphere is now developing and we are to nourish and cherish it. So, no spooky stories, please, we have to help here, they are human resources for the country.
— Investigation under the case of MSU student Varvara Karaulova accused of an attempt to join a terrorist organization “Islamic State” (outlawed in the territory of the Russian Federation) finished in August. This story and search for the responsible became a reason for discussions. Here is the question: is prevention of terrorism going to be intensified in higher education institutions?
— Ministry of Education and Science is now working on a draft law named “On Approving Antiterrorist Requirements for Educational and Scientific Institutions”. The Requirements will provide for organizational, engineering, technical and legal measures. The Ministry does not now have a security mission as such and in order to solve the problem, we are planning to introduce changes into laws and regulations and to create a division inside state service, human resources and administration department.
— Educational institutions started to publish students’ graduation works on the Internet. What documents are going to regulate this process?
— Texts of graduation qualification works, apart from those constituting national security information, are indeed published on electronic library system of the educational institution and are checked for the volume of borrowings. It is an acting norm regulated by a relevant decree of the Ministry of Education and Science. At the same time, educational institutions regulate the procedure of publishing and checking the volume of borrowings themselves.
— A suggestion to forbid state servants’ children to study abroad was filed to the State Duma in August. What is your opinion to this?
— Our citizens have always thought of education, including education abroad, as of one of the main priorities.
We now have a major task of making Russian education prestigious set before us. In order to meet this task we are using a full range of measures, including international exchange students’ programmes.
Ministry of Education and Science' programme “Global Education” has also received a wide-spread acceptance. Its purpose is to send Russian students study to the world’s best universities. By the way, they show great results there.
— Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia Rector Vladimir Filippov is offering to make an obligatory Russian language examination for foreign students. Confirmation of language skills level is now required by all the American and European higher education institutions and we do not have such a requirement here. What do you think about this initiative?
— It is a good suggestion and we are going to hold RFL (Russian as a Foreign Language) examinations for students of preparatory departments.
At the moment, we are one of those rare countries, who prepare foreign students for studying in our countries’ educational institutions in special preparatory departments, using state language. I think that decent level Russian language skills will contribute to their successful higher education studies together with Russian students.
In order to introduce this procedure, it is required to develop unified testing and assessment materials, assessment criteria and a procedure of holding the final test.
— Ministry of Education and Science was assigned to consider a possibility of governors’ membership in supervisory councils of supportive universities. Are there going to be any advantages for universities?
— Governors’ membership in supervisory councils of supportive universities is of fundamental importance. In case a governor is participating in creating a university’s strategy and in decision-making, projects of regional development can include university scientific teams.
At the moment, there are no restrictions on including regional highest officials into universities supervisory councils, many of them do already include governors and heads of regional representatives of Rosimushchestvo. Such an approach allows regions to increase their scientific potential and solves the employment problem.
— Russian universities today are working hard to take good positions in international ratings; there is a special state program, which assists universities with this task. Still, not everyone believes these ratings can assess Russian universities effectively. MSU’s Rector Victor Sadovnichiy suggested making a national rating. Do you support such an initiative?
— Every rating is an attempt of assessment, independent of state authorities and we support such a suggestion. We have good achievements in higher education system and we should tell about them and about our scientific projects, but the thing is not everyone knows about everything.
Russian Rector Union is now developing criteria of national rating. We will be helping as much as we can because it should be done as soon as possible. I think, we are going to test it for the first time in 2017. I also think we should develop a Russian system of our scientific publications assessment; work on it is in progress now.
