Teacher without higher education: college graduates will come to schools

IRINA MISHINA

The Minister of Education admitted that it is possible to recruit teachers from among graduates of secondary vocational education to teach in schools from the fifth to the ninth grade.

The beginning of the school year with an infernal shade

«Currently, a draft federal state educational standard of secondary vocational education is being prepared for the training of subject teachers for primary school,» Kravtsov said.

Perhaps this news would not be so relevant if it were not for the sad messages that accompanied the beginning of the school year.

Before September 1, the corpse of a 14-year-old girl who did not want to go to school was found in the Southwest of the Moscow region. The schoolgirl was dressed all in black, and the police found a note in her belongings where she admitted that she did not want to prepare for the OGE.

And in the Moscow region, a 15-year-old schoolgirl was found dead after a ruler, on September 3. A ninth — grader after September 1 went to her grandmother 's dacha in Orekhovo-Zuyevo. The next morning, an elderly woman found her granddaughter dead on the summer veranda.

And one more message fits into the theme of the sad start of the school year, although from a slightly different side. In St. Petersburg, in the Nevsky district, there was a mass dismissal of 17 teachers from school No. 338. Fontanka quotes the words of parents who said that now there are no qualified teachers left in the primary school, teachers are leaving school. Also, parents and teachers say that there are not enough classes at school, and some lessons are held in the gym.

Is the shortage of teachers in Russian schools really so significant, and teachers are so unprofessional, that students are thinking about death? What's wrong with school?

Instead of «physicists» and «chemists» — psychologists and educators

What does the statistics say?

To date, the total number of schools in Russia has been reduced to less than 40 thousand. They employ 1.06 million teachers, of which almost a third, or 320 thousand, are primary school teachers. The normal provision of teachers also in Russian language and literature is 125 thousand. The number of English language teachers is only slightly inferior to them — 103 thousand, which in itself is very strange: are schools preparing labor resources for foreign offices? In this regard, the chairman of the State Council of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov, even proposed to reduce the number of hours of teaching English in schools, which is studied almost like a native language: in middle and high school, the number of hours of English per week is the same as the number of Russian lessons. This state of affairs becomes even more strange against the background of a catastrophic shortage of teachers in other subjects.

Things are relatively good only with math and history teachers. The first on average 2.5 per school (96 thousand), the second — 1.5 (65 thousand). Although this is also not enough. How can two teachers teach math to the whole school? Most likely, they work for one and a half or two rates, which means that they are physically unable to pay due attention to children, especially taking into account all the papers that have to be filled out. The same situation is with history: on average, there is one teacher for the whole school.

For the rest of the subjects, the situation is simply catastrophic:

• computer science — 27 thousand teachers;
• physics — 30 thousand .;
• chemistry — 23 thousand .;
• geography — 30 thousand .;
• biology — 31 thousand .;
• music — 19 thousand .;
• fine art and drawing — 15 thousand.

It is not difficult to calculate that Russian schools are staffed by teachers in most subjects by no more than two-thirds, or even less. In other words, one third of schools lack all teachers except Russian, English and mathematics. Of course, every school has its own situation. But on average, the shortage of teachers is significant. There are simply no huge number of teachers in schools.

At the same time, there are as many psychologists in schools as there are teachers of physics or computer science. There are almost as many «social educators». This leads to the question: what is the purpose of a modern school?

To knowledge — backwards, to ideology — in front?

Irina Abankina, a professor at the HSE Institute of Education, repeatedly stressed in an interview with NI that the number of teachers of retirement and pre-retirement age is growing in schools: young people do not go to work in the education system.

«Obviously, there are more attractive specialties in the labor market. And it's not even about the salary, but the fact that the load on teachers has become supernatural. Now schoolchildren have 8-9 lessons in high school, and for some reason this is considered the norm. Teachers' educational standards are constantly changing, the workload is growing, certification is carried out every 5 years, every 3 years — compulsory study at advanced training courses, various new educational projects, competitions, Olympiads. I want to tell the minister: „Finally let the teacher teach!“, — says Dmitry Kazakov, a teacher of social studies and history from the Nizhny Novgorod region.

«In the regions, teachers usually have several educational courses, and all this distracts from the main work, of course. Teachers are removed from lessons, others are forced to replace. There is an increase in the volume of work without increasing the salaries of teachers,» says Vsevolod Lukhovitsky, a teacher of Russian language and law at the Moscow Intellectual School.

At the same time, the quality of education is not growing, parents are forced to «get» from tutors the knowledge not acquired at school. A study by Rambler&Co concluded that half of parents use the services of tutors. Almost half of the surveyed Russians (49%) turned to the services of tutors, among them 35% do it on a regular basis. According to Sberbank Services, tutors most often place ads about teaching English and mathematics (23% each), as well as Russian (19%).

Job search service SuperJob conducted a similar survey among parents of schoolchildren and found out how much they spend on tutoring services. It turned out that expenses usually increase as the child grows up. So, if for students of grades 7-8 the weekly cost of additional classes is on average 2.8 thousand rubles, then in 10-11 it reaches 3.5 thousand. I will add from myself: at least this is 10 thousand a month, 3, 5 thousand was in the «initial».

In general, parents are not thrilled about college graduates coming to school.

From reviews in social networks.

Elena Grichanova: «Nurses will treat, non-teachers will teach. How they are in a hurry to finally kill medicine and education.»

Corvo: Why do teachers need education if the state doesn't need educated people? Let's take everyone who wants to become a teacher without presenting documents, so we will solve the problem of personnel shortage. Moreover, soon there will be no Russian children in schools, and migrants don't care who will teach, they will teach to read and write, and that's fine.»

Natalia Petrova: «There are no words, this is not a way out and not a solution to the problem, teachers should be paid adequately. If the state does not have money for schools, then money for prisons will be needed soon.»

In the teacher's room — yesterday's exam students?

Will the arrival of college graduates as teachers be useful for children?

«The level of knowledge of college graduates is certainly different from the level of knowledge of university graduates. And in grades 5-9, where college graduates want to be sent, in fact, children study with whom it is most difficult, because it is at this age that the foundations of personality are laid. Throwing 18-19 year olds at this is more than strange,» says Vsevolod Lukhovitsky, a teacher of Russian language and law at the Intellectual school.

«Do you want to bring college graduates to school? Well, let's have college graduates treat people in hospitals, people from colleges will also come to Roscosmos, maybe then we will finally launch Luna-25,» says Dmitry Kazakov, a history and social studies teacher from the Nizhny Novgorod region.

School, apparently, is increasingly becoming a place where children will not be taught, but brought up, and in trends that are chosen exclusively by the state. NVP, Conversations about important things, labor education — the introduction of which in schools was also announced by the minister, is likely to become a vector for the development of education, which will turn from knowledge to ideology.

Recently it became known that half of the teachers in Russian schools are pensioners and pre—retirees. Statistics of the Ministry of Education gives more optimistic data: they are «only» 43%. But soon they will be replaced… by yesterday's exam students. And then the country will soon have to think not about knowledgeable specialists, but about the fight against illiteracy.