Education in Russia


In Russia, the state provides most education services regulating education through the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Regional authorities regulate education within their jurisdictions within the prevailing framework of federal laws. Russia's expenditure on education has grown from 2.7% of the GDP in 2005 to 4.7% in 2018 but remains below the OECD average of 4.9%.
Before 1990 the course of school training in the Soviet Union lasted 10 years, but at the end of 1990, an 11-year course officially came into operation. Education in state-owned secondary schools is free; first tertiary education is free with reservations: a substantial number of students enroll on full pay. Male and female students have equal shares in all stages of education, except in tertiary education where women lead with 57%.
A 2015 estimate by the United States Central Intelligence Agency puts the literacy rate in Russia at 99.7%. According to a 2016 OECD estimate, 54% of Russia's adults have attained tertiary education, giving Russia the second-highest attainment of tertiary education among 35 OECD member countries. 47.7% have completed secondary education ; 26.5% have completed middle school and 8.1% have elementary education. The highest rates of tertiary education are recorded among women aged 35 to 39 years.
Compared with other OECD countries, Russia has close to average class sizes and some of the shortest instruction hours per year.
In 2014 the Pearson/Economist Intelligence Unit rated Russia's education as the 8th-best in Europe and the 13th-best in the world; Russia's educational attainment was rated as the 21st-highest in the world, and the students' cognitive skills as the 9th-highest.
In 2015 the OECD ranked Russian students' mathematics and science skills as the 34th-best in the world, between Sweden and Iceland.
In 2016 the US company Bloomberg rated Russia's higher education as the third-best in the world, measuring the percentage of high-school graduates who go on to attend college, the annual science and engineering graduates as a percentage of all college graduates, and science and engineering graduates as a percentage of the labor force.
In 2014 Russia ranked as the 6th most popular destination for international students.
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative finds that Russia is fulfilling 86.8% of what it should be fulfilling for the right to education, based on its level of income.

Levels of education

According to the law, the educational system of Russia includes 2 types of education: general and professional.
General education has the following levels:
Furthermore, there is also an additional general education.
Professional education has the following levels:
Furthermore, there is also an additional professional education. It is available for graduates of institutions of vocational or higher education.

Preschool and primary school

According to the 2002 census, 68% of children aged 5 were enrolled in kindergartens. According to UNESCO data, enrollment in any kind of pre-school programme increased from 67% in 1999 to 84% in 2005.
Kindergartens, unlike schools, are regulated by regional and local authorities. The Ministry of Education and Science regulates only a brief preschool preparation program for 5–6-year-old children. In 2004 the government attempted to charge the full cost of kindergartens to the parents; widespread public opposition caused a reversal of policy. Currently, local authorities can legally charge the parents not more than 20% of costs. Twins, children of university students, refugees, Chernobyl veterans, and other protected social groups are entitled to free service.
In 2019, pre-school begins at the age of two months old to six years old.
The Soviet system provided for nearly universal primary and kindergarten service in urban areas, relieving working mothers from daytime childcare needs. By the 1980s, there were 88,000 preschool institutions; as the secondary-education study load increased and moved from the ten to eleven-year standard, the kindergarten programmes shifted from training basic social skills, or physical abilities, to preparation for entering the school level. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the number decreased to 46,000; kindergarten buildings were sold as real estate, irreversibly rebuilt and converted for office use. At the same time, a minority share of successful state-owned kindergartens, regarded as a vertical lift to quality schooling, flourished throughout the 1990s. Privately owned kindergartens, although in high demand, did not gain a significant share due to administrative pressure; share of children enrolled in private kindergartens dropped from 7% in 1999 to 1% in 2005.
The improvement of the economy after the 1998 crisis, coupled with historical demographic peak, resulted in an increase in birth rate, first recorded in 2005. Large cities encountered shortage of kindergarten vacancies earlier, in 2002. Moscow's kindergarten waiting list included 15,000 children; in the much smaller city of Tomsk it reached 12,000. The city of Moscow instituted specialised kindergarten commissions that are tasked with locating empty slots for the children; parents sign their children on the waiting list as soon as they are born. The degree of the problem varies between districts, e.g. Moscow's Fili-Davydkovo District has lost all of its kindergartens while Zelenograd claims to have short queue. Independent authors assert that bribes or "donations" for admission to kindergartens compete in amount with university admissions while authorities refute the accusation.
The number of Russian children enrolled in preschool institutions reached 7.44 million in 2020, marking a decrease from the previous year. The birth rate saw a decrease from 2020, after growing in the late 2000s and the early 2010s.

Secondary school

General framework

There were 59,260 general education schools in 2007–2008 school year, an increase from 58,503 in the previous year. However, prior to 2005–2006, the number of schools was steadily decreasing from 65,899 in 2000–2001. The 2007–2008 number includes 4,965 advanced learning schools specializing in foreign languages, mathematics etc.; 2,347 advanced general-purpose schools, and 1,884 schools for all categories of disabled children; it does not include vocational technical school and technicums. Private schools accounted for 0.3% of elementary school enrollment in 2005 and 0.5% in 2005.
According to a 2005 UNESCO report, 96% of the adult population has completed lower secondary schooling and most of them also have an upper secondary education.
Nine-year secondary education in Russia is compulsory since September 1, 2007. Until 2007, it was limited to nine years with grades 10-11 optional; federal subjects of Russia could enforce higher compulsory standard through local legislation within the eleven–year federal programme. Moscow enacted compulsory eleven–year education in 2005, similar legislation existed in Altai Krai, Sakha and Tyumen Oblast. A student of 15 to 18 years of age may drop out of school with the approval of their guardian and local authorities, and without their consent upon reaching age of 18. Expulsion from school for multiple violations disrupting school life is possible starting at the age of 15.
The eleven-year school term is split into elementary, middle, and senior classes. The absolute majority of children attend full programme schools providing eleven-year education; schools limited to elementary or elementary and middle classes typically exist in rural areas. Of all the 59,260 schools in Russia, 36,248 provide the full eleven-year programme, 10,833 offer nine-year "basic" education, and 10,198 only offer elementary education. Their number is disproportionately large compared to their share of students due to lesser class sizes in rural schools. In areas where school capacity is insufficient to teach all students on a normal, morning-to-afternoon, schedule, authorities resort to double-shift schools, where two streams of students share the same facility. There were 13,100 double-shift and 75 triple-shift schools in 2007–2008, compared to 19,201 and 235 in 2000–2001.
Children are accepted to the first year at the age of 6 or 7, depending on the individual development of each child. Until 1990, starting age was set at seven years and schooling lasted ten years for students who were planning to proceed to higher education in Universities. Students who were planning to proceed to technical schools were doing so, as a rule, after the 8th year. The switch from a ten to eleven-year term was motivated by continuously increasing load in middle and senior years. In the 1960s, it resulted in a "conversion" of the fourth year from elementary to middle school. The decrease in elementary schooling led to greater disparity between children entering middle school; to compensate for the "missing" fourth year, elementary schooling was extended with a "zero year" for six-year-olds. This move remains a subject of controversy.
Children of elementary classes are normally separated from other classes within their own floor of a school building. They are taught, ideally, by a single teacher through all four elementary years ; 98.5% of elementary school teachers are women. Their number decreased from 349,000 in 1999 to 317,000 in 2005. Starting from the fifth year, each academic subject is taught by a dedicated subject teacher. Pupil-to-teacher ratio is on par with developed European countries. Teachers' average monthly salaries in 2008 range from 6,200 roubles in Mordovia to 21,000 roubles in Moscow.
The school year extends from September 1 to the end of May and is divided into four terms. Study programme in schools is fixed; unlike in some Western countries, schoolchildren or their parents have no choice of study subjects. Class load per student is lower than in Chile, Peru or Thailand, and slightly lower than in most states of the United States, although official hours are frequently appended with additional class work. Students are graded on a 5-step scale, ranging in practice from 2 to 5 ; 1 is a rarely used sign of extreme failure. Teachers regularly subdivide these grades in daily use, but term and year results are graded strictly 2, 3, 4 or 5.
Some secondary schools conduct, in addition to the standard programme, an in-depth study of some subjects. These schools are considered more prestigious than the usual secondary schools.