Reform for Soviet schools

Press, 10 January 1984, Page 18

Reform for Soviet schools

NZPA-Reuter Moscow

The Soviet Communist Party has unveiled a plan to reform the education system and improve the quality of teaching in the nation’s 142,000 primary and secondary schools.

Listed across the front pages of all the big Soviet newspapers, the changes include an extra year’s schooling, greater emphasis on work experience, and a modernised teacher-training programme.

At a Communist Party central committee meeting last June, the Soviet leader, Mr Andropov, sharply criticised the school system, saying that teachers were not of a high enough standard and turned out pupils who were not adequately educated.

The planned changes, some of which are already being introduced, clearly respond to Mr Andropov’s call for “a fundamental school reform.” Teachers will now train for five years instead of four, and more

men will be encouraged to teach. Once in the school, teachers will be expected to make “full use in the classroom of the symbols of the Soviet state — the anthem, flag, and emblem of the Soviet Union.” Under the reform, children will start school at the age of six from 1986, instead of at seven. The earlier start will be gradually introduced, with some six-year-olds joining older classmates initially.

The plan calls for all children, regardless of their mother tongue, to master Russian by the time they leave secondary school. Many children in the Soviet Union’s 15 constituent republics speak Russian very poorly and study in their own native language. One Western diplomat said the reform was part of Mr Andropov’s “over-all shaping-up campaign,” reflecting parents’ dissatisfaction with dropping standards and official concern over a possible lack of

skilled manpower.

To combat this skilled labour shortage, the Communist Party guidelines for reform suggest that children should do useful work from the first class, visit the factory floor by the eighth, and study technical subjects.

The guidelines also said that text books needed to be ' revised, replaced, and used far more in the classroom J and at home, where many ' children prefer to watch - television.