Not the values, but poverty: why the compulsory unified national exam on a foreign language was canceled

Recently, Novye Izvestia has already reported on the low level of examiners taking the exam in history, as well as on the abolition of the compulsory exam in a foreign language. The situation with the latter was commented on by publicist Mikhail Makogon in his blog:

“Well, you know the story, the Ministry of Education canceled the third compulsory unified national exam in English, and Kommersant told us in our ear that it was done on the initiative of the National Parents' Committee in defense of “traditional values”.

Well, yes, it works the same way, the federal ministry is inclined to listen to crazy aunts from the Internet who have a legal entity with a sonorous entry in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.

For 10 years, since the time of Andrey Fursenko, the Ministry of Education (which was also science) has been preparing the third compulsory unified national exam in a foreign language.

Received budgets, wrote programs, held round tables and meetings.

By the time when it would be necessary to know the honor, two circumstances became clear: firstly, there is no material, technical and personnel base for compulsory English, and secondly, the level of teaching is so awful that if English becomes compulsory tomorrow for a certificate, graduates will go with certificates not even schools, but cities.

And if you read not Kommersant, but real officials, like those whose words are quoted by Alexey Kuznetsov on Echo of Moscow, then it is said about it quite bluntly:

“We have held hundreds of sites in each of the 85 regions of the country. Parents, teachers, education experts, student representatives were invited. All of them agreed that the education system is not yet ready for such a step, ”said Alena Arshinova, member of the Presidium of the General Council of United Russia, member of the State Duma Committee on Education and Science. - In educational institutions it is not possible to provide the educational process within the proposed time frame There are no teachers. And if they are, then, as a rule, they are part-time workers. There is no necessary equipment and funds for its purchase. What money should be spent on the exam? They are not included in the budget..."

Listen, the exam, even in two subjects is a big problem. Not because of the good life, mathematics was divided into a "basic" and "profile" level, and normal summary statistics on the results are not published at all.

Before the Unified State Exam, there were many who were willing to talk about a "strong Russian school"; after that, it remains to turn the last two classes into one big training for the exam so that the knowledge of the average graduate, at the moment, meets the passing score - the first half of the sixth grade.

Firstly, we have no patrons, and secondly, traditional values..."