Headquarters for the Protection of Russian Schools
Headquarters for the Protection of Russian Schools was a movement for the preservation of public secondary education in Russian in Latvia. Its leaders were Vladimir Buzayev,,, Miroslavs Mitrofanovs, Mihails Tjasins,,, and for some time also Alexander Kazakov. One of its most prominent spokesmen was Yakov Pliner.
Aims of the movement
Cancelling the Education law provisions, which originally ordered the language of instruction in public secondary schools to be only Latvian since 2004. It also supports providing effective learning of Latvian language in the Latvian language and literature lessons and specific preparation of teachers for Russian schools.History
The staff was founded in April 2003 as a coalition of various organizations, most prominent being ForHRUL, and later expanded, involving nonpartisan people. In 2003–2004, the Staff has organized political demonstrations to protest to expanding use of Latvian language in Russian schools. Freedom House has also noted that "Over half of all Russian students took part in protests."As a result, the Education Law was amended in February 2004, allowing to teach up to 40% in the forms 10-12 in minority languages. The proportion of teaching 60% of subjects in Latvian and 40% in Russian, according to BISS research, was supported by 20% of the teachers, 15% of pupils and 13% of parents in minority schools and most stated that they would rather support bilingual instruction in all subjects; only 15% of teachers thought that no reform was needed, while this opinion was expressed by 36% of parents and 44% of pupils. The parliamentary opposition started two cases before the Constitutional Court of Latvia with most of its demands being refused.
After 2005, the activity of the organization fizzled out, with its followers joining other similar organizations, like the United Congress of Russian Communities founde in September 2004 and others.