Ukrainian MPs will now deal with education in the Crimea
SYMFEROPIL — In the wake of the recent uproar in education, it has been decided that students in the Crimea will be tested in their language of instruction. These changes are envisaged in a directive that was issued on Jan. 24, 2008, by Ukraine’s education minister, dated Jan. 24, 2008. The Ministry of Education also issued a special statement to the effect that “information about tests in Ukrainian for children graduating from schools with Russian as the language of instruction, which was disseminated by certain media, does not correspond to reality.” Clearly, the ministry was also referring to The Day and its recent article “All Crimean schools get low marks.”
The ministry announced that it has adopted testing procedures whereby external tests on each subject will be conducted by the Ukrainian Center for the Evaluation of the Quality of Education in the State Language: “For participants in external independent evaluations who received a secondary education in the language of an ethnic minority at their request, such tests will be held during the transition period (2008-2009) in a given language, with the exception of tests on Ukrainian language and literature. The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine regards this campaign as another attempt to speculate on the so-called language question, which was ungrounded...”
The last statement is debatable. First, in order for the education minister to adopt the new testing procedures on Jan. 24, 2008, the Crimean authorities had to do a great deal of work— including at a demonstration in Symferopil, where Minister Ivan Vakarchuk was burned in effigy because he had rejected the idea of such tests being conducted in minority languages, although he had fielded a formal enquiry from Crimean Speaker Anatolii Hrytsenko and other parliamentarians. Alla Horieva, Hrytsenko’s press secretary, told The Day that compulsory Ukrainian language tests for all school-leavers planning to enroll in higher educational institutions were a separate point on the agenda of the meeting between Hrytsenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko: “The prime minister showed understanding of the situation that has developed around school-leavers in the Crimean Autonomy after this directive was issued. She is aware that a student who has gone through the secondary school curriculum being taught every subject in Russian will inevitably face problems when taking external higher school enrollment tests in Ukrainian. Anyway, this issue has been resolved — in a positive way for the Crimean region.”
As previously reported, more than 95 percent of Crimean children are receiving a secondary education in Russian. According to the Ministry of Education of the Crimea, there are 555 schools with Russian as the language of instruction on the peninsula, along with 6 and 15 schools where instruction is in Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar, respectively. Including specialized classes, only 3.5 percent of all schoolchildren are studying a Ukrainian curriculum.
Meanwhile, the issue is not as simple as meets the eye, and it is far from being exhausted. Ukrainian is the official language and has been taught as such in Crimean schools since 1955. At the same time, there has been a transition period in effect since 1991, allowing schools in the Crimea time to switch to instruction in the state language or at least to obtain adequate command of Ukrainian. This task, set by the Ministry of Education of Ukraine, has not been carried out in the Crimea. As a result, Crimean school-leavers have been unable to pass graduation exams every year, and every year the Crimean authorities have asked official Kyiv to allow these exams to be held in Russian, so that even graduating students who want to take such exams in Ukrainian have had to use Russian. There are also thousands of Crimean school-leavers who do not know the state language because of their teachers, and they are stepping out into the big world feeling inferior simply because they have problems enrolling in Ukraine’s higher educational establishments or getting jobs in companies where clerical work is done in the official language.
Not so long ago, the Verkhovna Rada’s Science Committee came up with somewhat different findings after studying this issue. Member of Parliament Volodymyr Polokhalo (BYuT), who is the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Science and Education, said recently: “Several days ago, the Committee on Science and Education held a meeting with the rectors of Ukraine’s leading institutions of higher learning, such as Kyiv National University, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the Polytechnic Institute, and their counterparts in the Crimea and Odesa. Among those present were leaders of educational organizations, parliamentarians representing all political forces, and Minister of Education Ivan Vakarchuk. None of those present, including members of the Party of Regions, the Communist Party, or Crimean or Odesa higher schools raised the issue of holding such tests in Russian...We will meet on Feb. 6 to summarize 2007 and consider 2008 plans for such tests. If this issue is raised again, we will find an adequate response to it. Today, none of the people representing the Crimea’s science and education have raised this matter. This means that all these rallies are nothing more than a provoked campaign, spin-doctor-engineered technology. We should be more concerned about the issue of lowering standards of training of school and college/university students in the Crimea. Not a single adequate public examination has been held in the Crimea in the past 15 years to check what school subjects children are taught there and how, whether local educational standards meet those that have been adopted in the rest of Ukraine. I regret to say that the Crimea has turned into an educationally degraded region.”
Considering the fact that schools in the Crimea failed to switch to normal studies of Ukrainian as the state language in 53 years, it is highly unlikely that the two-year transition period (2008-2009) given to the Crimea by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine will suffice. It is likely that in 2010 other political forces (not schools or the Ministry of Education of the Crimea) will capitalize on asking the ministry to allow Crimean school-leavers to take tests in Russian, or perhaps the situation will have essentially changed during this period.
COMMENTARY
Valerii LAVROV, Minister of Education and Science of the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea:
Of course, it will be difficult for us to switch our schools to another language of instruction in two years within the transition period. However, I believe that the numbers of school-leavers taking tests in the state language have significantly increased this year. Next year their numbers will increase. Therefore, unless the necessity of taking such tests in the official language is annulled, we will be in a position to gradually increase the numbers of school-leavers with a perfect command of the state language. We believe, however, that this transition must be gradual and not forced.
