Consolidation of schools into one complex. School mergers: should we be afraid? Why are teachers, students and their parents protesting against school consolidation unhappy?

In the capital, scandals around the consolidation of schools into “educational complexes” do not stop. Parents of students at pro-gymnasium No. 1651 in the Moscow district of Yuzhnoye Tushino claim the threat of its closure, which arose after the merger with two more schools (No. 680 and No. 106) and two kindergartens.

According to them, when the issue of unification was being decided last year, parents were assured that this was being done to “settle financial issues,” and for students the reorganization was nothing more than changing the nameplate.

Progymnasium No. 1651 has been teaching children of preschool and primary school age for 20 years. The most comfortable conditions have been created for children, ensuring a smooth transition from kindergarten to primary school, parents say. An excellent teaching staff has formed here; graduates enter the best secondary schools in Moscow, including the Kurchatov school located in the district.

“We didn’t have any falsifications, as they say about other schools, during the merger,” said one of the parents. “They explained to our director that the gymnasium, which has only 8 classes and 2 kindergarten groups, cannot survive on its own in the new conditions. She believed herself and was able to persuade us (and this took a lot of work) to agree to a merger with two mediocre schools.

But already in September, after the merger documents were signed, instructions were received to disband the gymnasium. At the very first meeting, the director announced that the existing classes would be distributed to other schools, and no new ones would be recruited.”

According to parents, first-graders, graduates of the preparatory group of the gymnasium, found themselves in a particularly difficult situation. They could no longer get into any decent school. Parents' appeals to all possible authorities, including the president (the letter to Putin was sent to the city department of education and subsequently read out at a meeting at school) played their role. Enrollment in the first grades was open; for now, students were left to finish their studies in the previous building, but it was not ruled out that they would finish primary school in other educational institutions.

“Now the department has found a new trick: non-compliance with sanitary standards and rules,” said Petrovskaya. — The pro-gymnasium is located in a building intended for a kindergarten, it does not have a separate dining room, and the ceiling height in the gym instead of the required 6 meters is only 4. And, although the requirements for 6-meter ceilings apply not to our kids, but to high school students, this is quite possible enough to take away the building from the gymnasium.”

On Tuesday, a meeting between parents of students and the leader took place outside the gymnasium building. According to Mitrokhin, the director of the integrated complex (who previously headed school No. 680), who was passing by, joined the discussion and then invited those gathered to enter the school, although she initially did not agree to hold the meeting within the walls of the school. After listening to the complaints of the parents, the director agreed with their demands to “jointly think through the external or internal reorganization of the premises of the gymnasium, making them comply with Sanitary Regulations,” which would allow preserving the institution. A meeting to discuss a possible redevelopment or extension to create separate spaces for the cafeteria and gym will take place next Saturday.

“There are 35 gymnasiums in Moscow, half of them are located in kindergarten buildings, and extensions have already been made to many,” said Petrovskaya. — I am a designer myself, there are two architects among us, we imagine how to do this. But we started by sending letters to various charitable foundations, as well as to wealthy people - Prokhorov, Potanin, Deripaska. Of course, we have no chance of getting into the Capital Education program with this extension.”

Letters to potential benefactors were sent out only today, so there are no replies from them yet.

According to Mitrokhin, the “unexpected concern of officials” about compliance with SanPiNov is nothing more than a pretext for the reorganization of the pro-gymnasium, which “is carried out exclusively in the interests of the bureaucracy and has nothing to do with improving the quality of the educational process.” “Using the example of pro-gymnasium No. 1651, one can understand the absurdity of the school reform being carried out in Moscow. The creation of school holdings destroys teaching staff, destroys unique educational institutions that demonstrate high quality education and evoke only positive feedback from parents,” says the Yabloko leader.

The school director refused to give her opinion on the threatened liquidation of the gymnasium and measures to save it. According to Ilyina, she will not discuss this issue with the press. “These are internal problems of the gymnasium, and I will discuss them with parents,” she said. The possibility of the presence of a Gazeta.Ru journalist at the upcoming meeting with parents on Saturday, the director, according to her, “must agree with her leadership.”

Meanwhile, this “leadership” - the district department of education - received the highest praise from the city government the day before. As the head of the department, Isaac Kalina, said at a government meeting on Tuesday, in the North-Western District “the most took advantage of the opportunities of Resolution No. 86 of May 22, 2011” (“On conducting a pilot project for the development of general education in the city of Moscow”). 66 educational complexes have been created in the North-Western Administrative District, which includes 212 institutions. Almost 76 thousand children study there.

“26% of all educational complexes in the city have been created in the district,” the head of the department praised the district education department.

According to him, as a result of the merger of schools, the administrative and managerial apparatus was reduced by 37%, and teachers' salaries increased by 41%. The head of the department also included an increase in the quality of education, “the formation of a unified cultural and educational environment of the microdistrict that consolidates its residents,” “expanding the possibilities for choosing educational services and programs,” and even “reducing the level of antisocial manifestations” on the part of children and adolescents as the results of the creation of educational complexes.

In addition, according to the department, the result of the last two years has been “an increase in the level of satisfaction of the population with the educational services provided by the education system. (According to a survey of parents via an electronic journal system, satisfaction increased from 47% in 2010 to 75% in April 2012.)

“The school has changed a lot in recent years, and those people who studied 30-40 years ago probably feel nostalgic to some extent for the school they studied at. And we studied in good schools, but today they cannot meet the requirements that we set today,” Kalina said. The unification of schools, caused by the needs of the time, is necessary not only to save money, but also to create a normal educational environment: students have more opportunities to choose different educational profiles and programs, Kalina believes.

And according to Sergei Sobyanin, the opinion of parents whose children attend Moscow schools differs from the opinion of people who are not related to the school today.

“Those who do not interact with the school also express their opinions. And this opinion is much worse, because they do not know about the changes that are taking place in schools, and, perhaps, they judge how it was at the time when their children went there. Therefore, in general, Muscovites need to be more actively informed about the changes that are taking place in education. Because there is a big difference in the attitude of those citizens who are now in contact with the education system, whose children go to school today, and the contingent as a whole, the population as a whole,” the mayor said.

A member of the Presidential Coordination Council for the implementation of the national strategy of action in the interests of children, the executive director of the regional public organization “Complicity in Fate” Charitable Center considers it “unacceptable” to unite schools, especially those that are different in essence, into “holdings” of many thousands. “It is completely unclear on what basis the merger of schools taking place in Moscow is based,” says the expert. “It is not motivated by the interests of children; it seems to me that this is being done solely from the point of view of saving money and nothing more. But this is exactly the case when there is no need to save. This situation was not discussed with specialists, with experts. Lately, it has been our custom not to listen to objections and not to consult with anyone, the boss made a decision - and that’s all.”

The shortage of first-graders largely made us think about merging schools. Photo Agency "Moscow"

The merger of schools did not achieve the effect that the authors of the project expected, according to analysts from the Higher School of Economics (NRU). Strong students benefited from the events, and the problems of weak schools became even more noticeable, they state.

Let us remind you that the process of unifying schools began in Moscow. It was caused, as its organizers explained, primarily by demographic problems. The shortage of first-graders in certain schools became so noticeable that there was a desire to revise school policy. And at the same time, solve other accumulated problems, such as: equal access to quality education for all categories of schoolchildren, a more equitable distribution of finances between schools, improving the material base of institutions, optimizing the management apparatus, more rational use of school property of nearby schools, etc.

As the process began, important nuances emerged. For example, what to do with remedial classes? How can we do without selection for lyceum classes, when not everyone who wants such training can handle such training? Suddenly it turned out that the director who remained in the merged school often left not his best colleagues to work there, but his own.

The experience of Moscow, as is customary, is sometimes mechanically transferred to the regions. This happened this time too. I remember when journalists came to the regions, we often heard from teachers there that, they say, Moscow is still understandable, but why do we all need this? Absurd stories were told of students running to classes from one school to another several blocks away.

In general, the problems were layered. Teachers and parents wrote letters to higher authorities - right up to the president of the country. The passions have subsided a little as time has passed, but scandals still flare up where the “optimization” process is still stalled.

Employees of the Higher School of Economics - Natalya Derbyshire and Nadezhda Bysik, analysts at the Center for Socio-Economic Development of Schools at the Institute of Education of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Marina Pinskaya, a leading researcher at the same center - conducted an analysis of school monitoring, which examined the topics: accessibility of education, quality of education (in Unified State Examination scores), children’s academic performance, school clubs, teachers’ moods, their professional growth, the school’s readiness for dialogue with parents.

It turned out that enrollment in 10th grades has increased, but only slightly. For example, the share of students in specialized classes increased from 81% of the total number of schoolchildren in 2013 to 83% in 2015. At the same time, strict selection for lyceum classes remained. And strong students from weak schools turned out to be weaker than their rivals from strong schools. At the same time, the best teachers from weak schools were taken away. In a word: the strong have become stronger, the weak are out of work.

As for the quality of training, there are results, but again they are insignificant. According to official Unified State Exam statistics, which HSE experts cite in their work, the share of students who received low scores on the exam (less than 30) decreased from 8.4% in 2013 to 5.3% in 2015. And the share of poor students decreased from 3.7 to 1.9%. The average Unified State Exam score in Russian language and mathematics in Moscow schools is almost stable. In the Russian language it increased from 70 to 71 points, in mathematics it decreased from 57 to 55 points. But this fact, by the way, may not be directly related to the preparation of schoolchildren. To some extent, it also depends on the level of complexity of CMMs (control and measuring materials).

Another finding from the monitoring analysis is that student achievement across divisions (and grades) continues to vary greatly. The data from the Moscow Center for Education Quality for the 2014/15 academic year is indicative. In one educational complex, the spread of grades can be very large. Within one school, the ratio between classes in achieving positive grades (all but a D) in mathematics can be 44% (for the outsider class) versus 78% for the leading class. For optional subjects, this gap may be even greater. For example, in chemistry, in one class 83% of students pass the subject as “good” or “excellent”, and in another - only 28%.

That is, there is a formal unification, but there was no common “experience”, everyone lives separately, a culture of common values ​​has not emerged. Compared to successful students from parallel classes, outsiders feel even more unsuccessful.

But with teachers it’s the opposite. Their psychological well-being has not become worse. Those teachers who ended up in a “merged” school rate their school higher than their colleagues from non-integrated institutions.

In enlarged schools, teachers began to engage in tutoring and other additional work less often. But this does not always mean that they have high incomes even without this type of activity. For example, this may be due to additional paper reporting that has fallen on teachers in enlarged schools. At the very least, the majority of teachers surveyed speak about an increase in the “paper” load. The experts conveyed the mood of the teachers with the following direct speech from the respondent: “We have become like a factory, everything is for the rating, but we have lost the student, we no longer care about the child at all.”

Principals of consolidated schools note the professional growth of teachers, HSE analysts report. The complex offers many opportunities for demonstrating leadership qualities, but at the same time, the teacher’s professional growth remains free of charge.

Another interesting detail: the consolidation of schools helps to strengthen the management vertical. The director of the school complex, like another large plant, is becoming less and less accessible to the team. His endless busyness with household affairs is not at all conducive to close spiritual contact. In general, the effect that was expected to be achieved by merging schools has not yet been achieved.

Scientists from the Institute of Education of the National Research University Higher School of Economics have found out how the lives of students and teachers have changed after the creation of large educational complexes in the capital.

Natalia Derbyshire, Analyst at the Center for Social and Economic Development of Schools at the Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics.

The merger of schools in Moscow has caused heated debate. Why should a good school “carry along” a bad one, parents were perplexed. Is it possible to ensure a favorable school climate in such a complex and large-scale structure, teachers in the “author’s” schools worried.

Teachers complained about the huge workload and the onslaught of reporting. Now that the merged schools have already gotten used to each other, it is possible to assess how much the goals of the merger have been realized. Their formula was simple: children - good knowledge, teachers - recognition, career and income growth. HSE scientists have found out what has actually happened in schools since 2012, when the first reorganizations began.*

Changes were studied on seven points: accessibility of education, quality of education (in Unified State Examination scores), children’s academic performance, clubs at school, teachers’ moods, their professional growth, and the school’s readiness for dialogue with parents. Quantitative changes - the reduction in the number of schools from 1,572 in 2012 to less than 700 - will be left out of the equation.

Availability of quality education

Positive result: high school has become more accessible.

• Schools have increased enrollment in tenth grade. In 2015, 23% of directors of educational complexes announced the opening of additional high schools (in 2013, 17% of directors spoke about this).
• Profile classes have become more accessible. This is especially important: studying there increases your chances of successfully passing exams and entering a prestigious university (see How to improve your Unified State Examination results). The share of students in specialized classes increased from 81% of the total number of Moscow high school students in 2013 to 83% in 2015. Parents of students from schools where such classes appeared saw an increase in the quality of education: “There are no complaints about the teachers.”
• In many complexes, the division into profiles took place openly. “We were given ... statements, all the directions that [are] in the three divisions [of the complex] were listed, each one noted his own predispositions and tastes,” said one of the students. “Then, on the basis of all this, certain classes were formed in the units.”

And yet, quality education is not available to everyone.

Problems: The “simple” classes are not given the best teachers.

• Many schools maintain strict selection for lyceum and specialized classes (based on high grades and a solid portfolio). “In this case, the strongest students, as a rule, from the most powerful division of the complex or promising students from other schools enter the most popular specialized classes,” the researchers commented. This situation can be called a bottleneck effect, through which few are able to go through, emphasized Bysik, Pinskaya and Derbyshire.
• Capable students who do not get into such classes are doubly offended. Firstly, they did not pass the selection. Secondly, they will get teachers of the “second row”, since the best teachers were taken by the lyceum segment. “I came here initially in order to later enroll in... faculties related to programming, I came here to work hard on some kind of project,” said one of these guys. “But the programming here is very weak, a normal teacher came to us only at the end of last year, and now he is gone.” Distributing the best teachers according to the principle “sometimes thick, sometimes empty” is unlikely to improve the quality of education throughout the complex.

Quality of training

Positive result: There are fewer failures in exams.

The share of students who received low scores (less than 30) on unified exams decreased from 8.4% in 2013 to 5.3% in 2015. At the same time, the share of poor students decreased from 3.7% to 1.9%.

Problems: there is no significant increase in results.

The average Unified State Exam score in Russian language and mathematics in Moscow schools is almost stable. In the Russian language it increased from 70 to 71 points, in mathematics it decreased from 57 to 55 points.

Student achievements

Positive result: some schools tightened up their weak divisions.

It was assumed that the merger of schools would help improve the quality of education: strong structural units (SP) can influence weaker ones. This happened in a number of schools. But this is not such a common practice. Pupils' achievements continue to vary greatly across divisions (and grades).

Problems: academic performance is not leveling out; in weak departments, children continue to leave school after the ninth grade.

• Some departments are far ahead, while others, on the contrary, are behind, showed independent testing by the Moscow Center for Education Quality in the 2014/2015 academic year. A typical case is an educational complex in which the spread of grades in mathematics is very large. In one joint venture, 82% of students received positive grades (all but two grades) in the fourth grade. In two other joint ventures of the same complex - 96% and 100%. In seventh grade the situation is even worse. In the outsider division - 44% of positive assessments versus 78% and 56% in the other two joint ventures.

A ninth-grade chemistry test revealed an even larger gap. The share of positive grades in the weak division is 50%, of which 17% of students received “4” and “5”. In the other two SPs, 83% and 100% of ninth graders wrote the test without failures; 28% and 65% of students received “4” and “5”.

• Due to the continuing failure in grades, 40% of ninth-grade graduates from outsider departments leave school for technical schools and colleges. In SP-A students, only 20% of their peers leave school.

In some schools that have become subdivisions of complexes, “there is no common experience of trust, comfort, and interest in learning for all,” the researchers commented. This prevents “creating a culture of shared values ​​for the entire complex” (see about this How the psychological climate at school affects academic performance).

Clubs and sections at school

Positive result: additional education expanded.

Developing children's talents was another goal of the reorganizations. The share of children enrolled in additional education at school increased from 64% to 80%.

Problems: mugs are not available to everyone.

Well-being and mood of teachers

Positive result: educators consider their schools more competitive in terms of salaries.

Teachers of educational complexes rate their schools higher than their colleagues from non-integrated institutions (Table 1).

Table 1. Teachers' assessment of the school, in %.

Answer options	Enlarged schools	Non-integrated schools
Definitely uncompetitive
Rather, uncompetitive
Rather, competitive
Definitely competitive

Source: Study Monitoring the Economics of Education, 2015

In consolidated schools, teachers are less likely to engage in tutoring (14.7% versus 25.8% in non-integrated schools) and other additional work (9.8% versus 20.6% in non-integrated schools). But this does not always mean that they already have high incomes.

Problems: Teachers still have many reasons for dissatisfaction.

• Teachers of the complexes were less likely to note an increase in salaries.
• They were more likely to talk about being overly busy. Thus, 53.9% of respondents from consolidated schools and 41.6% from non-integrated schools complained about the increase in reporting. This affects teachers' sense of self.
• 35% of teachers negatively assessed the consolidation of schools. Dissatisfaction was caused by a poor social package (vouchers, additional medical care, etc.), low salaries, working with difficult students and difficult relationships with superiors.
• Teachers feel that their contributions are often not recognized. Many are convinced that it is worth rewarding not only those who ensure high achievements among excellent students (and thereby increase the school's rating), but also those who achieve progress among difficult students. “We have become like a factory, everything is for the rating, but we have lost the student, we no longer care about the child at all,” said one of the teachers.

Professional development of teachers

Positive result: In the educational complex, teachers learn more from each other and grow more professionally.

• “Teachers make comparisons... see how others work,” noted one school principal respondent. Teachers also learn from outside experts. “About 80% of our teachers are improving their qualifications,” said another school administrator.
• In the complex, as in the wider environment, there are more opportunities to take initiative and advance in your career. “The teacher from the “gray mouse” at the school became the chairman of the interschool methodological association,” said one of the directors. This kind of pedagogical leadership inspires other teachers as well.

Problems: Professional growth comes with increased unpaid responsibilities.

Teachers themselves describe a less rosy picture of professional development. It comes with increased responsibilities that are often unpaid. “We get the same amount, but we have to do more,” one of the teachers emphasized.

Dialogue with parents

Positive result: schools have become more open.

Parents are better informed about events at school. More directors in 2015 noted that information for parents is posted on social networks (12.7%, versus 6.4% in 2013), sent via SMS and email. Thus, school leaders care about the image of the organization and its representation in the external community.

Problems: directors are inaccessible.

• The complex directors' time is scheduled to the minute - due to high workload and busyness. Not surprisingly, personal meetings between school leaders and parents decreased - 53.2% in 2015 versus 64.1 in 2013. Principals are often available to parents by appointment.
• Principals are also disconnected from teachers, the researchers emphasized. In a large complex, in which thousands of children study and hundreds of teachers work, a management pyramid is being built, which “does not imply close communication between teaching staff, students and parents with the director at the top.” In addition, in such an educational organization, “it is extremely difficult to create connections between the teaching staff of individual departments,” the authors of the study summarized.

*The work is based on data from several studies from 2013-2016 conducted by the Institute of Education of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Among them is Monitoring the Economics of Education for 2013 and 2015. The qualitative study was conducted in five Moscow educational complexes and included written surveys of the school community. Thus, 600 eighth grade students and 250 teachers were surveyed.

Let me remind you that schools began to merge about four years ago. It seems to be by decision of the teaching staff themselves. But the parents suspected correctly: a successful school would not voluntarily absorb two lagging ones, and even hang a couple of kindergartens around its neck. There was a lot of noise, suffering, and hand-wringing. They talked about the tragic death of small “author’s” schools, and about the fact that it is inconvenient for children to travel to schools throughout the area - first to one building, where the lower grades are gathered, then to another, where the middle grades are.

But now time has passed. Teachers, directors and students got used to each other. The time has come to analyze what happened. Researchers from the Higher School of Economics Nadezhda Bysik, Marina Pinskaya and Natalya Derbyshire have been collecting data over the past four years and conducting surveys in five Moscow educational complexes. And finally the findings were published.

FACTS

There are fewer poor students who received low scores (less than 30) on the Unified State Exam. In 2013 there were 3.7%, in 2015 only 1.9%. But there is no significant increase in results. The average Unified State Exam score in compulsory subjects - Russian language and mathematics - is stable. In the Russian language it increased over two years from 70 to 71 points, in mathematics it decreased from 57 to 55 points.

NUMBERS

In 2012, there were 1,572 schools in Moscow; now there are less than 700 educational complexes.

VIEW FROM THE 6TH FLOOR

Give me a smart director!

Alexander MILKUS

Over the years, I have heard two opinions about the merger of the capital's schools.

One is good. Like, it’s good when the complex has its own kindergartens and children are prepared practically from the cradle to study at “their” school. In this case, the kids are not afraid of the first grade - they know the teachers they will come to, and they also know the building where they will go. And it’s easier for teachers - they can select children with approximately equal abilities and temperament for classes. Another plus is that the lower grades study in one building (as correct), and the older grades study in another. It’s just that at recess, teenagers who have their own games won’t casually knock down a first-grader. A recreational area for children is being created in the primary school buildings. Well, profiles for high school students, as the study says, are also good - the school has money to purchase equipment for classrooms, computers and other important things.

The other is diametrically opposite: the merger “killed” small schools where a team of like-minded teachers worked, where children felt like one family with their teachers. Well, this is inconvenient - first the children go (or walk) to one building, then to another - and they may be at a distance of several transport stops.

The Moscow Department of Education covers it with numbers: now more metropolitan schoolchildren are winning all-Russian and international Olympiads, the students wrote the recent PISA tests (which show the quality of education) quite well.

And I thought about this: a new education system - and a complex with thousands of students, hundreds of kindergarteners and teachers - requires a new management system. I know a dozen directors of new complexes. These people are amazing - both in their outlook and in their understanding of the essence of modern education. Among these friends of mine there are people under 50 with experience and extensive teaching experience, and very young, energetic and active. But, as the Department of Education admitted to me, seven hundred such directors are needed, and there are no more than a hundred of them. The rest still need to be taught, prepared...

And here, in my opinion, is the main problem. The schools have been merged, but there is no leader ready to manage such an economy.

When management fails to create an atmosphere of cooperation, when children do not want to go to classes because they are boring and the teaching is bad, then dissatisfaction with the merger of schools arises. And then under this dissatisfaction there is an understandable motivation.

The school merger project scares many teachers and parents. The Slovo portal talks about what happens to the school after its transformation into a large educational complex. Tatyana Vladimirovna Smirnova, Honored Teacher of the Russian Federation, Director of the Moscow State Budgetary Educational Institution Lyceum 1564 named after. Hero of the Soviet Union General Beloborodov, initiator of the unification of the lyceum in 1564 and the school in 1918.

- Why is the merger of schools being carried out?

Major changes in the field of education, such as the merger of schools, always have two goals: strategic, coming from the Moscow Department of Education, and the need for reorganization, which comes from below, from the schools themselves. Each of the educational institutions participating in the reorganization receives something for itself.

- By what methods is this law put into effect?

If we talk about my personal experience, I did not experience any pressure from above. Under the current management system, I have also not witnessed such pressure, although similar examples are given on the Internet. But I assure you: without a written application submitted by the school staff and agreed upon by the educational council, the founder cannot make a decision on the reorganization and sign the order. It cannot be that the order appears first, and only then the procedure takes place.

- When merging schools, are the wishes of teachers and parents taken into account, or does everything happen by order?

I must say that before the merger of the lyceum and the school, I already worked in a large educational complex. This type of institution was widespread not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia. The complex included a preschool level and a school: junior, middle and senior. Therefore, I went through the experience of such a reorganization of an educational institution, and I have only positive memories of both that time and the new system.

Thus, the idea of ​​merging our schools, voiced two years ago, fell on prepared ground. However, it was necessary to talk with my parents and explain my plans to them. Their opinion is certainly taken into account. Now, with the openness of education, with the new system of public administration, parents can always express their wishes.

Then I coordinated the plans with the teaching staff. It’s no secret that no matter how innovative they are, these teams are very united and very conservative in the good sense of the word.

In fact, the process of coordination and approval of the new curriculum took place from February 2011 and ended only when meetings began with the most interested audience - the students. The high school students of our lyceum, for example, themselves invited me to discuss the upcoming changes. Before this, I was going to hold a joint meeting of students and parents, but it turned out that the students themselves took the initiative. It should be noted that we recruit schoolchildren from different educational institutions into specialized lyceum classes, and in the senior classes there are many students from that very school of 1918, who are especially interested in the outcome of the reorganization.

Of course, there were very different opinions about the merger of schools. It was unclear to many why this reorganization was being carried out at all and whether it would become a simple relocation from one building to another. I had to explain that it was conceived only for the good, only for the sake of development.

- What consequences does merging schools have in practice?

My personal conviction: all participants in the association benefit. The most obvious example is the change in wage levels. Perhaps the school will not feel it very strongly, but for kindergartens merged with schools, it is noticeable: the salary of kindergarten teachers increases significantly. It must be taken into account that the funding of educational institutions comes from the number of participants. It is clear that a kindergarten with 200 students will receive a much smaller amount than an educational complex with 1,500 students.

This also implies the possibility of strengthening the material and technical base. The equipment of many educational institutions is now outdated and requires replacement. Also, an increase in funding makes it possible to carry out major repairs, which one kindergarten or even one school cannot afford.

It is also worth mentioning a very important, albeit lengthy, process: mutual enrichment and mutual penetration of teaching teams. Let's look at the example of our schools: the teachers of Lyceum 1564 were highly qualified, actively used new technologies, and looked for new approaches to students. Therefore, in order to help 1918 Primary School teachers work with educational standards in mind, we have introduced co-teaching between a computer science teacher and a primary school teacher. Thanks to this interaction, the information space is open in each of the first and second grades, and it is possible to work with new tasks that are not available using only educational literature. Also, some parents have become interested in this new scheme, and are now looking not only at the electronic journal, but also at the teacher’s information space. But this process is very long, and the final results can only be seen after 3-5 years.

- What do students gain and what do they lose?

The students are definitely not deprived of anything. Regarding acquisitions: firstly, they get the opportunity to participate in additional activities that are traditional for each of our institutions. The most striking example is that our lyceum never took part in the parade on November 7 on Red Square, but the guys from 1918 took part in it every year. This year, our guys were able to join this event and gained tremendous experience in patriotic work. Secondly, of course, students get the opportunity to use shared resources.

- What happens to teachers who work using proprietary methods in small schools?

The author's methods will never be lost. Now we, together with the methodological association, are working on developing educational programs in which we must take into account all the features: personal experience, and some discoveries and achievements of each teacher. We carefully think through the program, taking into account that in the future the teacher will, using his own methods, conduct some special events and develop his own teaching concepts. This will be a general, collective work that will not lead to the standardization of education. After the reorganization, the team becomes larger, and open lessons - traditional events for sharing experiences - help to find a middle ground.

Will this law affect all schools, or will certain ones be immune - for example, schools with a creative focus?

Now applications for the reorganization of schools are not considered in batches, but individually, and the Department of Education does not approve all applications. Some of them are rejected for various reasons: for example, inappropriateness due to geographical location. So, if we talk specifically about schools with a creative bias, then applications will be considered in the same individual manner, with the understanding that each of them will gain. The fact that every school should receive some kind of plus, some kind of purchase, some kind of increment is my firm conviction. A purely formal association is meaningless.

What can you advise parents if their good school has been merged with a dysfunctional one, but they still want to give their children a decent education?

Everything needs to be explained to parents as honestly as possible. If you do not find the courage to speak to them honestly, looking them in the eyes, then you cannot hope for the success of the reorganization. It is necessary to openly tell them everything that is. According to the education law, the school administration must reflect all global changes on the institution’s website, and information about the reorganization must also be posted there. Managers are also required to prepare a public report every year. Of course, this report needs to reflect all stages of the reorganization, tell what changes await the school and how parents can monitor the implementation of these tasks.

However, if, due to the director’s dishonesty, parents find themselves in such an unpleasant situation, the first thing they need to do is get information first-hand, from the director. You need to talk with the administration of the reorganized institution about what will happen next: in a year? and in two years? And specifically: what will happen on the first of September to the class where my child is studying? Leaders are required to provide parents with comprehensive information on these issues.

Interviewed

Kristina Ukhova