OREANDA-NEWS. Vladimir Putin held a meeting on the results of the academic year just ended and the implementation of regional programmes for modernising public education.

In particular, meeting participants discussed measures aimed at improving the quality of school education, of school supplies and educational resources, improving teachers’ training, increasing wages, and creating new educational programmes.

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PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon colleagues, both those here in the Kremlin and those in the regions of the Russian Federation.

Today we shall take stock of the previous academic year and discuss how regional projects to modernise public education are proceeding.

The main objective that we set for these projects was, first and foremost, improving the quality of school education. In turn, this depends on upgrading schools’ educational resources, improving teacher training and increasing the prestige associated with educational work, including by fair, well-earned remuneration.

Did you know that over the past three years 120 billion rubles [USD 3.7 billion] have been allocated to regional projects from the federal budget alone? And another 40 billion rubles are provided for in this year’s federal budget.

Over more than two years now nearly 190,000 teachers and school directors have improved their qualifications. School libraries have received 63 million textbooks. The facilities of 34,000 schools across the country have been renovated. Nearly 20,000 schools have equipped their classrooms with new educational equipment.

At the same time, in many schools the overall picture relating to resources and improvements has still not improved, or has improved very little. Parents, students and teachers themselves rightly talk about this and draw attention to it.

It is obvious that many problems accumulated over the years. Thousands of Soviet-era schools lacked basic amenities. But together we are allocating important funds from the federal and – as I already said – regional budgets. I am convinced that results could be even more substantial and visible.

I would ask both the Minister and our colleagues from the regions of the Russian Federation, those working with us today, to comment on the situation, on what we need to do in order to increase the efficiency of our work to improve schools’ teaching and equipment resources. Let’s also talk about this.

Now a few words about teachers’ incomes. I promised that I would closely monitor this process and I have. I would like to point out that as of last year, the average teacher’s salary was equal to or higher than the average wage in only 13 regions of the Russian Federation. In another 34 regions it was slightly lower than the average, but in the vast majority of regions the targets were not achieved.

Let me remind that we specially paid with federal funds for urgent expenses to upgrade equipment and resources in schools, so that regions could redirect newly-available funds to increasing teachers’ salaries. I would emphasize that this year the question of teachers’ salaries must be definitively resolved in all Russian regions.

And the thing is, colleagues, both those right here, and those in the regions, we have already talked about this many, many times. In this respect we can refer back as much as you want to the fact that some imbalance might arise, that representatives of such and such a profession might start to receive less than teachers. You know what I want to say? Go to the representatives of those professions and ask them whether they want their children to get a good education, to have a solid start in life. Ask people working in mines, in steel mills, in aircraft factories, in automotive plants, first and foremost people from blue-collar professions, whether they want their children to have a chance in life? I am confident that the vast majority of parents do want this. And education is a government priority. The future of individual people, individual families, and the country itself depends on it. Therefore, it is a choice; you must understand it’s a choice about priorities. There is nothing wrong about this, and there is no imbalance here.

Of course, and I’ll talk about this now, people have different professional qualifications, and this must be reflected in their salaries. Of course, there must also be variations between different professions. But there is no reason to be embarrassed of the fact that teachers in our middle schools receive an average wage. This is nothing to be embarrassed about. We must strive for this and ensure that it comes about. All the more so since money allocated to the majority of regions from the federal budget was part of the programme I mentioned, the one designed to modernise education.

In the future, once we have reached the levels we’ve agreed on (average wage in the economy) – annual increases in teacher incomes should be mandatory. It is important for people to feel stability, and for teacher incomes to no longer lag behind others in a given regional economy. Naturally, increases in salaries should be closely connected with professional development and improving the quality of work done.