Education in Russia Federation

I want to give you some facts and figures about the Russian Education System. Children start school when they are 6 or 7. They go to school for eleven years. The years are divided into primary (4 or 3 years), secondary (5 years) and senior (2 years). Secondary education is mandatory in Russia.

The academic year begins on 1^st September and finishes on 31^st May. June is when the 9^th and 11^th forms take their exams. The academic year is broken into terms or quarters with three breaks. The summer holiday starts on 1^st June and lasts for three months.

The school day normally starts at 8:30 a.m. and finishes at 3 p.m. There are some variations from school to school. Schools in big cities often have two shifts, as their buildings are not big enough to accommodate all the students at the same time. The school week is five or six days long. Young students have three to four lessons a day while older ones have up to seven lessons.

The main school subjects are: Russian, Literature, Mathematics, Physical Culture and History. Russian is a compulsory subject, but ethnic minorities have the right to teach in their own languages. English is the most popular foreign language studied in school. Other languages taught are German, French and Spanish.

Class size is usually 20 to 30 students. Primary teachers teach all subjects while subject specialists teach secondary and senior classes. Students are graded from 2 (unsatisfactory) to 5 (excellent). On rare occasions the mark 1 is given as a punishment. If a student has unsatisfactory results at the end of the year, they will be held back and asked to repeat the year.

Some Russian state schools specialize in a group of subjects, e.g. Maths and Physics, Biology and Chemistry. There are also vocational schools where children are trained for their future jobs (ballet dancers, musicians etc.) and have general education lessons alongside their training. Nowadays more and more schools use modern communications and media technologies as part of the courses.

Last but not least is the subject of fees. Until the 1990s all schools were run by the state and were free of charge. Now, however some of them are private and charge fees.

Upon graduation from secondary school (which is not the equivalent of having completed their secondary education), students are given the choice of either continuing to attend the same school (high school; grades 10 and 11), or entering a vocational school or trade school. Both vocational school and trade schools are meant to provide one, long with the certificate of secondary education, with a number of useful skills (e.g., those of an electrician, technical, or computer operator).One attends the former for two years, and the latter for three or four.

Russia offers many undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Medicine, Arts, Engineering and IT. Fortunately the educational in Russia is changing and the latest reform mean that it is possible to apply to several universities at the same time - like in UK. But unlike Britain we do not enter using A Level grades. Instead we sit a university entrance exam. However, the Unified State Exam does apply to all regions in Russia now.

Moscow State University is a highly competitive university and the oldest Russian university, and it has long-standing traditions of academic excellence. Moscow State University is not as old as Oxbridge of course. Oxbridge dates back to the 12^th and 13^th centuries. Moscow State University was founded in 1755 on Saint Tatyana`s Day. Since that time, Students` Day is celebrated on the 25^th January.

Russian degrees have global recognition and are top of the World Health Organization and UNESCO rankings. Many Russian universities offer BA, B.Sc. and MA degree courses.

Entry to higher education is quite competitive. Some college departments (philologist, foreign languages-especially English, law, journalism) have dozens of applicants for one prospective student's position. The same is true of medical and theatre institutes. Up to the present, neither college students nor schoolchildren have had any say in the selection of courses they had to take. Everyone has studied according to uniform series of guide lines approved by the Ministery of Higher Education. Evidently, this situation is going to change in the near future.

Education in Russian has until recently been free on all levels. College students with good grades were rewarded with a modest stipend. All institutions of higher learning were subsidized by the government. Now that the country is changing to a market-place economy, the system of education is also bound to undergo profound changes. The first private scholls, gymnasiums and lycees, have already been founded in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in an attempt to revive the pre-1917 traditionals of Russian educational system with its high standards of excellence.

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