Education code frozen despite president’s signature
While the House of Representatives was scheduled to consider the Education Code at the spring session, the Ministry of Education and MPs are shocked by this unexpected turn of events.
Lawmaker Uladzimir Zdanovich who chairs the Education Committee says the work on developing the Education Code was suspended by the main legal department at the Office of the President.
“Towards the end of the last year, we received a resolution from the presidential administration, proposing to suspend drafting this document until the final decision on the 12-year secondary education was taken. We don’t have any other document which would supplement or revoke the previous one. Presently, we are working on the other segments of the code”, he said.
ERB: What have you achieved so far?
“The draft is in the parliament. It is almost complete. If decision was taken, we could have considered it – after some final touches – in the first reading during the current session”.
ERB: What is the probability that the 12-year system could be abolished?
“Deep down, I think that will not happen. The reform is close to completion. It would not be very rational to abolish it both from the economic and moral points of view”.
In his article, Rubinau also writes about the 10-mark evaluation system. He maintains that it is nothing better than the previous 5-mark system. Uladzimir Zdanovich says that nobody is going to abolish it for sure.
“Personally, I regard it as the last-year snow. It doesn’t influence on the quality of education and the level of knowledge. It is neither worse nor better than the 5-mark system. No. Nobody is going to abolish it”, Zdanovich says.
The Education Ministry expressed its principal stance on its official web site. It said: The refusal from the 12-year education system is an “unjustified beginning of a new reform…, which will lead to the need of revising the whole legislation”. Anatol Rubinau, a deputy head of the Office of the President, wrote in his article published in the Sovietskaya Belorussia newspaper that we should not copy the Western education system, because they are hit by unemployment.
How is it possible to abolish 12 years of general education if schools across Belarus will switch to a five-day week beginning from the next year? Uladzimir Zdanovich says everything is possible.
“This is a complex issue, but everything is possible” (grins).
ERB: Rubinau maintains that a 12-year education system is by no means better than the Soviet 11-year system…
“The Soviet school was indeed good. It gave wonderful knowledge. At the same time, let’s admit that it ruined the health of pupils. That’s why we need a 12-year system in order to find a compromise between keeping the quality and not damaging the health”.
Valiantsina Mayeuskaya, a deputy head of the general and secondary education department at the Ministry of Education, believes that it is already impossible to abolish the 12th year. Switching to a five-day week at school is the last step towards the 12-year education system.
Yury Hladkou, the head of the general and secondary education department at the Ministry of Education, told the European Radio for Belarus that the return to the 11-year system is not the position of the presidential administration. It is the position of some officials from the Office of the President.
Photo: www.univer.by
