Mikhail Mishustin: “Over the past five years, we have implemented a wide range of specialised measures under two national projects, specifically, Education, and Science and Universities. We spent almost 1.3 trillion roubles’ worth of budgetary funding on these measures, and we have laid a solid foundation for accomplishing our objectives. Specific approaches and decisions, due to be charted at the strategic session, will serve as a foundation for formulating a long-term education strategy.”
Mikhail Mishustin chairs strategic session on the quality of secondary and vocational education
Mikhail Mishustin chairs strategic session on the quality of secondary and vocational education
Mikhail Mishustin chairs strategic session on the quality of secondary and vocational education
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
We continue a cycle of the Government’s strategic sessions.
Today, we are marking Higher School Educator Day. This day is very important and is best suited for holding a strategic session on the national education system.
I would like to sincerely congratulate all those who have devoted their entire life to working with students, to this interesting and difficult work. I wish everyone a robust health and future successes.
Today, we are also marking the birthday anniversary of our great scientist, Mikhail Lomonosov who played a tremendous role in this sphere. He always strove to obtain knowledge in all sciences, including the humanities, exact and natural sciences, and he called for applying this knowledge in life. As Alexander Pushkin noted, he was our first university.
At our previous
strategic sessions, we discussed personnel training issues in great detail and laid
out approaches as to how universities, colleges and technical schools should
organise their work in order to train specialists who would meet economic and social-sector requirements to the greatest possible extent. We also need to implement national goals and objectives that the President has set before us.
First, this implies efforts to attain industrial, financial, technological and scientific sovereignty, as well as other key sectors. It is important to make
sure that our entire education system continues to meet these objectives.
I will note what has already been done. A wide range of specialised activities has been carried out under the two large-scale national projects – Education, and Science and Universities, for which almost 1.3 trillion roubles has been allocated from the budget over five years.
These funds were used to improve infrastructure across the country. Thousands of institutions, from kindergartens to higher education institutions, were renovated or built. We have provided them with modern equipment and everything they need for quality education.
We have also launched a number of promising projects, such as Professionality, Advanced Engineering Schools, and Priority 2030. World-class campus facilities, including dormitories, libraries and sports centres, are already being opened in the regions. In September, we launched the Specialised Educational and Research Centre at Novosibirsk University, which we visited it during our working tour of the Siberian and Far Eastern regions. We are also starting, on the presidential initiative, to set up a network of 12 flagship schools which are using state-of-the-art technologies in teaching and infrastructure.
We have laid a solid foundation for addressing the set tasks. Of course, all these activities will continue. Starting next year, they will be incorporated into the Youth and Children national project. We can see their impact in the way our schoolchildren perform at nationwide and international Olympiads, with many achieving excellent results in the Unified State Examination and other university admission tests, allowing them to enrol in higher education institutions.
However, feedback from parents, pupils and students, teachers and professors shows that there is still significant demand for improving the quality of national education.
There are also serious problems, including the high bureaucratic burden on teachers and their shortage in several regions.
A number of systemic decisions have already been made to improve this sphere.
At the president’s instructions, a comprehensive action plan has been drafted to improve the quality of teaching in mathematics, physics, and natural sciences in general in all schools across the country, as well as the level of training of teachers in these disciplines, and to eliminate teaching staff shortages.
It aims to help young people enter specialised universities with good knowledge and come to work at Russian enterprises as adequately qualified employees.
As for higher schools, at the beginning of the academic year we launched a pilot project to improve the teaching of fundamental disciplines. These include mathematics, medicine and natural sciences, as well as engineering and technology. We developed a respective programme within it and established key indicators for assessing its effectiveness. The project is being implemented in 50 leading engineering schools based at the country’s top universities.
Next, last year we also started pursuing a new model of higher education in a pilot mode at six Russian universities in line with the president’s instructions. Instead of a bachelor’s and a specialist’s degree, students will receive a basic higher education, and instead of a master’s degree, there will be a specialised level where they will immerse into studying the subjects of the field they have chosen.
Colleagues,
Today we have to form a clear education quality assessment system, for each of its levels.
We have all the tools we need. Rosobrnadzor has developed an index for assessing the quality of education and accreditation monitoring. This year, they were applied for the first time. We will also have a detailed discussion of the results today. The measures are new, and they still need to be tested in practice. This will allow us to identify weak spots in this process, eliminate them using existing mechanisms or create the ones that are missing.
The approaches and solutions that we will determine during the strategic session will become a foundation for further developing a long-term education strategy. This is our core document.
