EDUCATION
The Yaroslavl Region also boasts of a rich scientific and technological potential, oriented mainly towards research in the interests of the local economy. The Yaroslavl Region hosts 20 scientific-research organizations, 33 schools of higher learning, of which nine are local and 24 are branches of institutions based elsewhere with a student body amounting to 56,000.
Among them are Yaroslavl Demidov State University, Yaroslavl Ushinsky State Pedagogical University, Yaroslavl State Technological University, Yaroslavl State Medical Academy, Yaroslavl State Agricultural Academy, Rybinsk State Aviation Technology Academy, Yaroslavl State Theatre Institute to name just a few. The fee-paying education system of the Yaroslavl Region includes 14 schools of higher learning and is actively developing.
According to Expert Rating Agency, in 2004-2005 the Yaroslavl Region was rated 25th among the 89 Russian Federation Subjects in terms of innovation potential.
The Yaroslavl Region houses 27 State-funded specialized secondary education establishments and 7 branches of training institutions located outside the Region with a total student body of 27,000. The local primary professional training system is also well-developed. It includes 44 vocational schools training 17,000 students annually.
More than 340,000 people living in the Yaroslavl Region have university degrees or secondary-level vocational training. The Yaroslavl Region also has a very effective education system training personnel for motor-car construction and machinery industries. The Regional Government actively supports the local schools of higher learning that they could provide in-service training programmes for regional specialists and develop additional vocational training schemes.
The regional economy has begun to show signs of revival since early 2000. Industries, small and medium-size businesses, commerce, services and tourism now actively develop. Changes in the regional economy and social sphere spontaneously form a new order to the educational system. The program of development for the Yaroslavl Region, called From Surviving to Well-being, has identified education as the most important development factor of the formation of market economy and new cultural values within the regional community. These new cultural values are: freedom of choice, self-dependent activities, entrepreneurships and responsibility for social life.
Strategic Guidelines of Modernization
To carry out its new mission, the regional educational system needs to be modernized. The Yaroslavl Regional Program for Educational Development for 2001-2003 with a future extension to 2005 outlines the following strategic guidelines for such modernization:
provide equal access to education for various strata and groups of the regional population;
make a new financial mechanism for managing education based on per-capita funding of schools ('money follows the pupil');
make mechanisms for state and public governance of the regional educational system;
make a new system of teachers' training, retraining and in-service training for the regional educational system;
develop partnership between the regional schools and other organizations and social institutions;
improve the network of schools;
provide social security for students, pupils and employees of the regional educational system;
further develop the humanization of education and the democratization of governance in education;
develop information and computer technologies (ICT) in education.
Goal: New Qualitative State
The implementation of the above strategy shall bring the regional educational system into a new qualitative state with the following features:
essentially different relationship of schools with their external environment;
essentially different 'inner environment' in schools (more competent teachers, advanced educational technologies and a higher organizational culture);
qualitative increase of qualifications of managers and teachers of schools;
qualitative change in the governance of the educational system, including a greater involvement of local community representatives.
New Financial Mechanism
An important issue in the educational reform is the deployment of a new mechanism designated to allocate budget resources in the regional educational system and provide for financial self-management of schools. From 2002-2003, the regional schools are supposed to be funded by the number of students. This way of funding shall streamline financial flows and have an impact onto schools' overall performance.
Therefore, the new mechanism of the budget distribution is one of the prerequisites of achieving a proper quality of education and a basis of all the reforms stipulated in the project of reforming regional education.
Financial self-management encourages the principals of schools to involve more actively social partners and off-budget sources needed to develop the schools.
According to the project plan, about 90% of the regional schools will acquire a status of the self-managing entity to 2005.
Rural Schools: Equal Access to Better Education
Under the current demographic situation, introduction of the per-capita funding of schools will cause a free re-distribution of students in the educational environment in those places (mainly cities) where the student can choose a school. However, this transfer to the per-capita funding will not significantly improve the quality of education in small rural schools, because many children from rural areas have no choice and their educational development is limited to the school where they study. Students from rural areas have no equal access to modern and high-quality education due to the poor material base and lack of highly qualified teachers in rural schools. Most of the graduates from rural schools don't know modern information computer technologies. They are separated from the world-wide educational environment, so they are poorer educated. The Regional Department of Education and the Heads of the education-managing bodies in municipal districts have focused their efforts on improving educational environment in order to increase economic efficiency and quality of education of rural students.
The Development program has determined several base schools in each municipal district. Theses base schools shall be equipped with modern equipment for learning and telecommunications. The location of base schools will make it possible to bring children by buses from near-by villages. The Yaroslavl Governor's Program School Bus is to provide the base schools with buses.
In the base schools the students from small village schools will study some subjects from the curriculum by the method of 'submerging' and explore modern information technologies. Thus, these students will have equal access to high-quality education and develop their communication skills. Besides, those students who are planning to enter universities will be able to get a proper comprehensive training in the senior forms of the base schools.
New Centres for Vocational Education
The program also plans to restructure a network of vocational schools and improve their profiles of training to provide access to vocational education. It is planned to set up 9 resource centers for the most promising lines of economic development of the Yaroslavl Region. Three centers shall be set up for vocational education of students with limited abilities.
Quality Management: State-and-public Mechanism
Quality of education is a key efficiency indicator of the regional educational system. We understand the quality of education as matching of educational outcomes and the ways of achieving those outcomes to legal requirements, needs of labor market, local community and students.
To provide the quality of general education demanded by labour market and local community, we propose a new practice of interaction between the state and public in governing the educational system. The state-and-public mechanism of quality management in education, stipulated by the Federal Program for Development of Education and now being worked out in the Yaroslavl Region, is to provide the above practice.
Below are the basic guidelines for the development of the state-and-public mechanism of quality management in education: