YAKUTSK, May 5. /TASS/. Support and development of nomadic education may become a part of the Children of the Arctic state program. Yakutia’s authorities have sent their suggestion to the Federation Council (parliament's upper house), chair of the regional parliament’s committee on science, education, culture, media and public organizations, Fedosiya Gabysheva, told TASS.
Earlier, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin issued an order to the Ministry for Development of the Far East and Arctic, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labor and the Finance Ministry to consider sources for financing the Children of the Arctic program and to see whether it could be included in the state program for social and economic development of the Russian Arctic zone.
"There is a lack of organizational and financial mechanisms for the system of nomadic education, and it is important to settle necessary technical aspects in the nomadic camps," the official said. "We can see a clear shortage of teaching methods, which would take the nomadic specifics into account, and also a shortage of textbooks and additional materials for children from such families. This is why we want the support for nomadic education to become a part of the Children of the Arctic program."
She also pointed to a lack of system to train teachers with skills in languages, culture and traditional economic activities for the tundra, who could provide education to children in the extreme conditions of the Far North.
It is also necessary to plan federal incentives for regions having schools with just few students or nomadic schools in areas where the North’s low-numbered indigenous peoples live. The incentives could support additional equipment and materials for education, she explained.
Nomadic education
About 82,500 representatives of the North’s low-numbered indigenous peoples live in the Russian Arctic zone. About 20,000 nomadic families roam the Arctic. Children from such families may go either to a boarding school or to a nomadic school.
In the Soviet times, boarding schools were a universal form of education for children of low-numbered indigenous peoples. Clear drawbacks of this form are that it was complicated for kids to get adapted to living in a village, to be separated from families, and to experience a dramatic change of the environment and culture, specialists say. An alternative option was to study at so-called ‘red chums,’ which later on transformed into nomadic schools.
An expert at the local branch of the federal institute of native languages Natalya Sitnikova stressed that those schools appeared in the early Soviet times. "Later on, for a long time, they were not used, and in the early 1990s they were reopened along with renewed national schools. The first nomadic schools opened in Yakutia’s Oleneksky and Momsky districts. From 2005, Yakutia implemented UNESCO’s project and prepared scientific bases and regional legislation for nomadic education. The region already has about a dozen nomadic divisions, which have educated about a hundred students," she said.
The Amur Region, Yamalo-Nenets and Taimyr regions followed Yamal’s suit. In 2016, the Yamalo-Nenets Region presented its Nomadic School project at the UN. Yamal was a pilot region for such pre-school education: it had 17 nomadic kindergartens and 5 schools. More than 200 children from nomadic families receive nomadic education. "It is important that Nomadic School (project) is aimed at maximum localization of education for the North’s low-numbered indigenous peoples, as education and teaching may take place both at camps and during the nomadic periods," she added.
According to her, new opportunities to make education accessible and high-quality, including extended education, in the Russian Arctic zone stem from new digital technologies. Under the Education national project, the country’s all schools will have a free high-speed access to the Internet so that students in far and hard-to-reach areas could enjoy online programs and so that their teachers could get additional online training. Besides, this opportunity will be helpful in settling the issue of the lack of teachers in remote areas.
Arctic indigenous peoples
In Russia’s eight Arctic regions 4,676 families living in areas of traditional economic activities are engaged in traditional occupations for low-numbered indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. The nomadic families have 6,569 children, including 2,203 of the pre-school age and 4,366 of the school age. Nomadic families receive social support. Local budgets cover the air tickets to send kids of such families to boarding schools and back to camps and their education.