Putin to visit secondary school in Podolsk on Knowledge Day

MOSCOW, September 1 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin on Thursday - Knowledge Day - will get acquainted with the
introduction of innovations in school education by an example of one of
the secondary schools in Podolsk, Moscow region. He will examine a number
of specialised school rooms, including a primary school room, a school TV
studio and a planetarium, as well as will talk to senior class students.
Minister for Education and Science Andrei Fursenko and Moscow region
governor Boris Gromov will accompany the prime minister, the government
press service reported.
The secondary school selected for the visit is one of the "young"
educational institutions of Podolsk. Nevertheless, in 2008 it won a
contest within the national project Education and in 2009 was the winner
of the competition for The Best Schools in the Moscow Region. This year
the school has won a competition of municipal educational institutions
developing and implementing innovative educational programs.
The school specialises in the subjects of natural sciences:
mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography and astronomy. All classrooms
are equipped with multimedia systems and interactive boards, and the
education is based on computer presentations. The educational process
widely involves a school 3D cinema, a studio for the creation of virtual
reality, school television, astronomical complex and an electronic
library. The school's astronomical complex is unique and only one in
Russia - it consists of a planetarium, a platform for visual observations
and the observatory with modern automated telescopes. The schoolchildren
under the guidance of scientists-astronomers prepare research projects and
engage in research activities.
In 2009 the school launched an experiment to introduce information and
communication and Internet technologies in the educational process. The
students of senior experimental classes instead of all textbooks,
workbooks and journals use personal mini-laptops, which replaced a number
of measuring and test instruments in physics classes, connect via the
Internet to special resources and are a way to communicate with the
teacher - regardless of the location of the student.
There are 703 pupils and 47 teachers at the school. Half of the
teachers have the highest qualification category. The average wage of
teachers at the school for the first quarter of the year was 23,254
roubles. Beginning September 1, the monthly pay of teachers and school
employees will be increased in line with the regional education
modernisation program.
This April, Putin proposed to develop a program of modernisation of
regional systems of general education for the next three years. The main
sense of the program is with the help of the federal budget subsidies to
help the regions implement a set of measures to modernise their own
schools and at the same time raise the salaries of teachers and school
staff. The federal funds are planned to be used to purchase equipment,
transport for students, making additions to the library, the development
of school infrastructure, the establishment of distance learning. The
released regional resources will be spent on raising the salaries that
have not been indexed for a long time.
The ultimate goal of the project is to raise the average teachers'
wages to average wages in the economy of each region. For this purpose the
federal envisages 120 billion roubles: in 2011 - 20 billion, in 2012 - 60
billion, in 2013 - 40 billion. This year, all the allocated funds - 20
billion roubles - were received by the regions in full volume.
The wage increases are expected in 40 Russian regions already in
September. In 38 regions of Russia the average level of teachers' salaries
will increase from 1 September will be raised by at least 30 percent,
compared with an average salary a teacher of the subject received in the
first quarter of 2011. And in four regions - the Ivanovo and Saratov
regions, the Republic of Tuva and Moscow - starting from September 1 the
average salary of teachers will exceed the average wage in the subject's
economy in the first quarter of this year.
As of today, about 2 million and 168 thousand people work in Russian
general education schools, half of them are teachers (lecturers). Another
200 thousand people are the so-called pedagogical staff (psychologists,
speech therapists, educators, etc.).
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