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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Kravtsov, let’s start with the programme that concerns lots of people in our country and can hardly be overrated. It involves total renovation and repair of school buildings. We have allocated fairly significant amounts of money to this end. Work is underway. How is it going?

Minister of Education Sergei Kravtsov: Mr President,

Thanks to your support, the programme for renovating school buildings and building new ones is on schedule, without glitches. Sanctions cannot interfere with this work. Annually, we renovate 1,500 school buildings. Your instruction to renovate 7,300 schools will be fulfilled on time.

I would also like to report that the school construction programme is on schedule, making it possible to eliminate the third shift at schools. Today, about 15 percent are on the second shift.

Also, all schools are getting new equipment, 1,300 schools by the end of 2024… Your instruction will be fulfilled, no doubt about it. We are installing equipment in schools, including rural schools, as part of the national project. We have created 17,000 Growth Points and 360 Quantoriums, and your instruction – a physics teacher mentioned at a meeting with you that this infrastructure should be used not only for senior pupils, but also for elementary school – has been fulfilled. We have sent the relevant guidelines to the regions.

These are beautiful modern schools. We can say there are no schools like that anywhere in the world. Of course, the quality of education depends on the teacher.

Vladimir Putin: The number of maths, physics, and computer science teachers is decreasing.

Sergei Kravtsov: At a board meeting, we discussed personnel development, among other things. We have seen a slight increase in the number of Russian language teachers, speech therapists, and special education teachers, but we see that teacher training is the second most popular specialty today: this year, 100,000 more applications were submitted to teacher training universities than last year. Last year, teacher education was the third most popular, this year it was the second.

We are confident that these issues will be solved, all the more so as we have your instruction, and amendments to the law, where fourth-year students are allowed to work in schools. Today, more than 50,000 students are working in schools. This is good experience, and it’s gratifying to see young specialists go to work in schools.

Thanks to your support, we also make payments for class supervision, while teacher training institutes have received modern equipment, which is appealing to young people. Unlike before, when young people chose to study in teacher training colleges as a last resort, today the enrolment competition for certain specialties is ten people per place. This is very important, and we will work to maintain this trend next year.

Vladimir Putin: Which specialties?

Sergei Kravtsov: These include both teaching and working with children that have disabilities. Natural science subjects, such as maths and physics, are relevant as well. Young people make this kind of choice, young people who intend to work in school.

We have organised 5,000 pedagogical classes, which already provide career guidance for future teachers. And we see that a large share of those that enter universities have studied in such pedagogical classes.

We will also introduce a new teacher training programme. At the Teachers of the Year meeting, Yevgenia Konstantinova addressed you; she works as a teacher of Russian language and literature, and also supervises a special physics and maths class. She requested that additional training be organised in areas of interest to her school students. For such teachers, we have initiated a project called Beyond the Horizons of the Subject.

Mr President, I would like to say a few words about the new regions. We are making active efforts there; we have a plan and schedule for integration of the new territories. People there are our family, and we speak the same language.

Major activities include work with senior school students, whose way of thinking has been distorted by the Kiev regime; work with teachers and educators; and infrastructure development. Schools that operate online for obvious security reasons are using our state information system, My School.

We have also organised a major event – university sessions for senior school students to travel to our cities and actually rediscover Russia.

In each school, we are introducing a new position, education adviser to the director. We have generally succeeded in building a unified system of educational work, which also includes advisers in secondary vocational education institutions (colleges) – which is essential.

All elementary school pupils are provided with hot meals, and security is ensured at all school facilities. This is the work we do jointly with Rosgvardiya (the National Guard).

We have also implemented your instruction on the supply of general fiction books: jointly with the Ministry of Digital Development, 1.3 million books were delivered to local school libraries.

A teacher from Lugansk asked for sister schools to be established. We have considered this issue as well; the supervising regions have engaged in the task and initiated the Faces of Friendship project at schools.

We also provide buses and repair school buildings and facilities, with 683 schools already renovated.

New regions have been included in the Education national project. They will take part in the federal project for total renovation of schools.

Within the next two years, we plan to provide for maximum integration of the new regions into the Russian education system.

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