Postcard from Bishkek

 

For most of the children in Kyrgyzstan, today marks the first day of the school year … perviye zvonok – First Bell – for 2013.

Actually, in Kyrgyzstan – as elsewhere in the former Soviet Union – the academic year starts on 1st September, but this year there’s been some confusion because that fell on Sunday and yesterday was declared a non-working day as the Independence Day holiday fell on Saturday … so most schools have decided to hold the first classes of the new school year today.

As you can imagine, it’s quite a big day so there’s been quite a bit of coverage in the news with articles about different aspects of education in today’s Kyrgyzstan … and I thought I would take a few moments to look at just a few of them.

The cost of going to school:

The kids have all been busy getting themselves ready, which basically boils down to buying new “outfits” to wear, bags to carry their things back and forth, exercise books and the usual paraphernalia like pens, pencils, rubbers, compasses and rulers … that sort of thing.

A report in Bishkek’s most popular newspaper, Vecherniye Bishkek– Evening Bishkek,  put this at about 10,000 som – just over USD200.  Interestingly, that is just about the average monthly salary here in Bishkek … in the regions the average is lower.

This ranged from 5 som for a 12 page exercise book, (12 pages?  there’s not much can be written in that … but it might represent better value – per page – than a 48 page exercise book with a firmer cover that costs 30 som –  four times bigger but costing six times as much); pencils at 7 som and biro pens at 10 som; a ruler at 20 som, crayons at 30 som and paints at 70 som.  They found a bag at 450 som … but I can’t see our kids using it – as it is obviously meant for someone in the First Class.  In fact they spent 2000 som each on bags.  This was despite my question, “what happened to last year’s bag?”.

Vecherniye Bishkek managed to find clothes for a seven year old going off to school for the first time for about three and a half thousand som … but when I suggested that as a budget, the kids looked at me with a “you’ve got to be kidding” look – even a pair of shoes is going to cost more than that.

One of the other news agencies, kloop.kg, conducted a survey of where was the best (that is, cheapest) place to buy things for school – at least here in Bishkek.  The cheapest place for clothes was in the city center bazaar, Osh Market – even though a lot of people, (if not most), went a little further afield to the massive Dordoi Bazaar on the outskirts of the city. Prices in the Osh market were about two thirds those in Dordoi.  That surprised me as I am sure it did most parents.

Textbooks:

When it came to textbooks, the Vecherniye Bishkek listed twenty that ranged in price from 40 som (handwriting) to 540 som (The History of Kyrgyzstan).

English and Russian language textbooks were both 180 som, but the Kyrgyz equivalent was 200som.

In recent years there has been a lot of controversy over the lack of textbooks available for use in schools – with some schools introducing a “deposit” before they will let children use textbooks – yet alone take them home in order to do their homework.

We’ve even resorted to buying some from the local bookshops – or from the stalls in the subways under the main city center crossroads; Bishkek’s equivalent of the Bookinists along the River Seine in Paris.

Some of the deficit, however, should have been covered with new orders placed by the Ministry of Education and some donations from Russia.

Admissions:

In one of the schools in Bishkek, it was reported it was by the 24.kg news agency, that parents were being asked to pay 15,000 soms – or so they had been told by a mother who asked not to be named.

“I wanted to move my daughter from one school to another,” she said, “However, the director was not present at the time of my visit and the teacher warned me of the need to pay an “entrance fee” for the placement of the child.”  She was a single mother with two children, and claimed that she couldn’t find that sort of money.

According to the “League defenders of children’s rights”, a charity that is conducting a campaign called “Take my child to school!”, this sort of complaint is becoming more common in recent years.   The problem seems to be that the child was not registered as resident in the school’s district.  According to the authorities, the city’s schools will take such children … “but only if space is available.”

Technically speaking such “buy-ins” are illegal in Kyrgyzstan’s schools and the mother can complain either tio the police or the authorities.

Teacher shortages:

According to a recent report, there are about 1300 vacant teaching posts in the country’s schools.  According to a spokesman from the Ministry of Education, the main shortages are in Russian language and literature, foreign languages and chemistry.

Oddly enough, the number of vacant posts, compared with last year, has fallen by about 400.

Among the issues complicating the picture are regional variations, (it seems that many of the schools with vacancies are in the regions), and the age distribution of the teaching force – many of which are either approaching or over the age of retirement.

Another issue, I suspect, is the low rate of pay … which led to protests and threats of strikes and people threatening to leave the profession last year.

Truants and children not in school:

During the year a census of schoolchildren is taken three times.

A recent report suggested that something like 12000 children in Kyrgyzstan do not go to school.  Another report suggested that well over two thousand did not complete the theoretically compulsory nine years of schooling.

Of the 15,000 registered disabled children in the country, only about a third of them went to school, just under 3000 were in institutions, a thousand were being educated “at home” and almost seven thousand did not receive education … “for health reasons” – although that wasn’t explained.

Interestingly, of twelve thousand children, about two thirds had been picked up by the system during the course of the year – and “returned” to school … but some didn’t continue with their education because of the “limited family budget”.

 Social Media:

A new website has been established, klass.kg, which will be a mix of social networking and electronic diary; users will be able to communicate with each other, share photos, notes, and has many other features.  It’s taken something like three years to develop and it’s hoped that parents and children will use the site and learn whilst they are enjoying themselves.

We’ll see.

 Sex Education:

Every now and again the thorny issue of Sex Education raises it’s head above the educational and political parapet.  A textbook prepared as part of an AIDS awareness programme was criticized a few years for giving the subject an explicit treatment, but now the rising numbers of teenage pregnancies in particular, (up by 60% over the last six years – and representing just over 1% of all the births in Kyrgyzstan), has led to calls for the topic to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

It seems that earlier there was a course, “Culture of Health”, which was taught by doctors but has been discontinued – or at least is now taught by teachers, not doctors.

Critics of this situation claim that Teachers are not well prepared to deal with sex education … that teenagers come up with a lot of tricky questions, to which the teachers are ill prepared, or too uncomfortable, to respond to.

There are, however, influential voices in parliament which are adamantly opposed to the introduction of a formal sex education course in schools.

Bullying and Extortion – a modern “Plague” in Kyrgyz Schools:

A recent report by IWPR, (International War and Peace Reporting), concentrated on the question of bullying in Kyrgyz schools.  Citing one particular case as typical, it described a three month ordeal suffered by an eleven year old with demands for money and threats of violence against the boy and his family.  When the mother approached the authorities, she was frustrated by the lack of response – saying that she told that bullying and extortion were a fact of life and she should be grateful that the boy hadn’t been harmed.

As it happens – the bullies may not have made good their threats of violence … but the boy was apparently ostracised by his classmates for reporting the case and had to move to a different school.

The response of the authorities when one of the kids was attacked (actually in school) a couple of years ago was exemplary … at least at first … As in the incident cited in the article, the case sort of “fizzled out” but a stand was made and, I am happy to say, there have been no further incidents .

There has been a lot of attention paid to this issue in the Kyrgyz media in recent years and I think that things are probably changing … a commission was set up a few years ago and a new campaign, “Schools without Violence” is about to be rolled out throughout the country after a trial pilot scheme across some 20 schools which have reported some promising results.

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From all of this, and drawing on my experience as a former schoolteacher, (albeit some twenty years ago in a different environment), two thoughts spring instantly to mind:

1. Some things never change – “people are people” and I remember the same sort of issues being rife in British schools back then … and, judging from what I read on the internet, are still vital issues these days
2. It seems that, in the end, in may ways it all boils down to “the bottom line”.

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Tags: Calendar, Education, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan