The Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
|
|
August 27, 2015. ADDRESS BY OKSANA KOZLOVSKAYA AT THE 44TH SESSION OF THE LEGISLATIVE DUMA OF TOMSK OBLAST
Dear Mr Zhvachkin!
Dear deputies and guests!
Today we are opening the autumn session of the Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast. At this session we will consider a large package of bills – from political ones to socioeconomical and financial. On most of them resolutions will be driven by the current situation in the country and the world.
Analysts point out that the slump in the global financial markets in August was caused by oversupply of hydrocarbons and shrinking commodity demand. Other drivers were a slowdown in Chinese growth and devaluation of BRICS and CIS currencies. The whole world is experiencing difficulties in finding money for new projects.
Russia is no exception. Lowering oil prices undermine the ruble, shrink budget revenues and real incomes. Apparently, this has to be taken into account for the development of the most important law of this autumn – the 2016-2018 budget.
Traditionally, August in Russia is the month to summarize results and define educational priorities for the coming academic year.
Russian experts have estimated that the share of value added through knowledge has increased 50% in the global economy whereas value added through physical labor, capital and resources is rapidly decreasing. They are convinced that new technologies will keep developing fast and in the nearest future the most skilled and talented portion of the population will secure the national wealth in developed countries and regions.
For the government at all levels it means that conditions must be created to attract and retain creative people who are willing and capable to learn and develop all through their lives.
Let me remind you, almost one third of the Tomsk Oblast budget spending (more than 20bn rubles) was spent on education in 2015.
How has the quality of education improved over this year?
The Russian Government has noted ‘better than last year’ results of the exam campaign in Russian schools. Almost 730,000 schools students took the Unified State Exam in Russia, including 5,500 students in Tomsk Oblast.
On most school subjects students from Tomsk Oblast demonstrated better scores than national average.
From mandatory subjects our kids are best at Russian Language. Traditionally, Tomsk Oblast achieves the highest scores and shows the largest number of 100-point earning students – 21 out of 45 – which is very encouraging.
However, other results are far from being so optimistic. Compared to 2014, scores went down for Math’s, Geography, Biology, and Information Science. For the first time ever not a single student in Tomsk Oblast scored 100 points. I deliberately point at this fact today.
The federal government judges the efficiency of the regional educational program based on the USE results. It is very important for us to be able to spot the gaps closing which will help improve the quality of school education. How can we do that?
Although we have a robust academic infrastructure, the shortage of subject teachers in our schools achieves 40%. Every one teacher out of five is older than 50 years. Retaining of young teachers in Oblast schools has become a pressing concern. The Governor has made a right point – we need to develop a dedicated action plan, a roadmap and work together with Tomsk universities.
Integration of schools and universities has been going on for several years now. More and more schools join this process every year. There are many successful examples in various areas of cooperation in the Tomsk Polytechnic and State Universities, the Medical and Teachers Training Universities, TUSUR. Still, it is not massive. District schools are falling behind. Distance learning helps a lot, promoted largely by the Tomsk State University but it is not enough.
Given the current demographic situation, the Russian Government developed a plan to provide school places for 6 million students by 2025. The plan for Tomsk Oblast is 35,000 school places. Within 10 years, all schools will become single-shift. The plan is to build 14,000 new schools across the country and repair the schools with more than 50% wear. In Tomsk Oblast, it is almost 60% of the existing school buildings (191 schools out of 332).
According to the Governor’s decision, this large-scale initiative should be given second priority after nursery schools, and should be funded through public-private partnership mechanisms and from the federal budget. The Duma will join the effort soon to develop legal grounds for the successful start.
Another pressing issue is shortage of school teachers. The average workload on one teacher in the Oblast is 1.6 today. If nothing changes, by 2025 a school grade will consist of 50 students and teachers will have to carry double load. We also need to find ways to replace almost one third of retiring teachers before 2025.
What should we do? Experts say that improving the social status of school teachers will help as well as new methods of further training based on professional standards. By the way, Tomsk universities could champion the development and implementation of this model.
There are other examples in other regions. Russian Sberbank and the Government of Moscow Oblast have launched a program Teacher for Russia. The program intends to send graduates of best Russian universities to the weakest schools of the Oblast. They will be paid from the special Fund provided by the bank. Of course, Tomsk Oblast is different from Moscow suburbs. Still, it is an interesting idea. Let’s think about it.
And last. In August, in the 43rd WorldSkills Competition in Brazil Russia was represented by 12 regions in 40 skills. Tomsk Oblast did not participate. But! In 2019, the competition will take place in Kazan who won the right to host the event in a fierce fight with France and Belgium. We now have enough time to prepare for a successful presentation of our region in this global project.
