More than 11% of Russian universities switched to distance learning

This was announced by the Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Valery Falkov.

"Generally speaking, we have 1,278 universities and branches. To date, 152 universities have completely switched to the remote format of education", - he said on the air of the Russia 24 channel.

The minister noted that the situation on the transition to a remote mode is resolved with each university separately, on an individual basis. Almost all of the remaining universities operate in a mixed format.

Falkov called the situation with the spread of covid in student dormitories unfavorable, but manageable.

"We have almost 900 thousand places in dormitories, and several tens of thousands of places are specially reserved for observation. There are more than 20 thousand of them. They are practically not employed, more than 80 percent of them are still idle with us, in the good sense of the word", - the head of the department explained.

According to the Ministry of Education, we note that the number of schools closed for quarantine has increased in the country - from 39 to 49. This is 0.12% of the total number of Russian schools.

Note that the Internet platform "Moscow Electronic School", designed for distance learning for children, refused on the first day of classes.

The distance learning program, introduced in many regions since April 2020, also initially malfunctioned. In some regions, schools turned out to be absolutely unprepared for "remote control" due to the lack of Internet connection and the lack of gadgets necessary for learning for both children and teachers.