MOSCOW, November 25. /ITAR-TASS/. The corruption and the lack of qualified teachers ruin the education system in the North Caucasus, Novye Izvestia daily believes. Head of the Russian education watchdog Sergei Kravtsov pledged at the end of the previous week to take tougher control measures over the procedure of taking the unified state exam in the regions of the North Caucasian Federal District. The exam papers will be brought under the guarding of police. The police will check the school students for cellular phones in the exam rooms by metal detectors. The experts polled by the daily affirms that the corruption typical for these regions in combination with such type of exam as the unified state exam will result in the fact that the school students are deprived of stimuli for successful education and the taking of the unified state exam and further entry in the higher educational institutions are turning in a competition of parents’ purses.
The gold medals for excellent graduation from the secondary school, which give the right to the graduates to enter higher educational establishments without contest, are sold for money in the North Caucasus. The medals for the secondary schools in the North Caucasus, particularly in the rural districts, are ‘the subsidiary coin’ and “the way for the teachers to earn somehow,” political expert and expert in the Caucasus studies Andrei Yepifantsev told Novye Izvestia daily.
The dozens of complaints from Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkessia have come on the hotline of the Russian Public Chamber over massive corruption in taking the exams, deputy head of the committee for education development in the Public Chamber Lyubov Dukhanina told the daily. In her words, no one tried to conceal the price of taking the exams, “The schoolmasters and teachers have raised from the school students several days before the exam from 20,000 rubles up to 100,000 rubles for one subject depending on its importance and the number of exam points.”
The entry in the higher educational establishments in the North Caucasian regions also does not do without corruption, it is impossible to enter the university in these regions without corruption ties. As a result a larger part of university graduates from the North Caucasus seriously lose in their education level to the education level of the university graduates from other Russian regions.
Not only students and their parents, but also teachers say about total corruption in the sphere of education. Experts believe that the lack of educational establishments is one more reason for ‘the battle of purses’ at the higher educational institutions in the North Caucasus. So, according to the statistical reports of the Russian Education Ministry, the number of professional educational establishments in the Caucasus is lower 1.8-2.3 times than that in Russia.
The state authorities try to combat the low quality of education in the North Caucasus regions, particularly through the system of exposing “inefficient higher educational establishments”. According to the press service of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, the latest survey has found the indicators of inefficiency in 12 from 49 Dagestani higher educational institutions. The republican office of the ruling party United Russia decided to ask the federal authorities to strip 80 percent of affiliates of higher educational institutions in Dagestan of their educational license over their inefficiency.
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