12 Solutions for New Education

Support for Early Development

Psychologists believe that academic failure and various manifestations of social maladjustment children exhibit during school years hark back to a great extent (more than 50% of cases) to problems afflicting them during early development.

Measures Required

Creating a patronage function to support the comprehensive development of children aged 0–3 years old (and for handicapped children between ages 0 and 6). Counselors and other professionals will provide free consultations to families over a range of topics pertinent to best practices in early development. These measures will help reduce early development risks while subsequently bolstering school performance and personal achievement.

Expected Result

The share of first-graders adequately prepared for school will grow by 20% through 2024 and will double by 2030.

Digital Schooling

More extensively harnessing modern ICT in education can yield multiple benefits across L&D realms. These include, inter alia, higher achievement through personalized learning paths, objective progress monitoring and evaluation, reduced teacher routines, etc.

Measures Required

• Mass-introducing modern digital teaching & learning kits. These will enable personalized learning strategies capable of delivering the right lesson at the right time and in the right format, while also offloading such teacher drudgery as conventional paper record-keeping, reporting and other routines to spare out time for creative design and instructional experimentation.
• Introducing game-based and simulation techniques and tools to foster student engagement, promote project- and goal-centric L&D models, and to facilitate the nurturing of 21st-century skills such as ICT literacy, active teamwork, critical thinking, resourcefulness, etc.
• Upgrading and expanding the system of distance and hybrid learning to ensure improved flexibility in coursework arrangement and progression, especially insofar as specialist subjects and extracurriculars are concerned.

Expected Result

Spending just an extra RUB 2 thousand per student annually over the analyzed period will ultimately enable a fully-fledged transition to an up-to-date digital schooling framework.

Upgrading School Infrastructure

Ensuring that school facilities feature adequate space design and technical fit-out is central to delivering effective learning in line with best-practice international standards. Also, a persisting lack of school premises themselves has significantly hampered the educational process: 15% of schoolers still have to study in shifts, while some 300 thousand Russian preschoolers of 2–3 years old are now devoid of early daycare slots, which spawns more acute developmental risks.

Measures Required

• Providing the entire stock of schools with high-speed broadband Internet access (100 Mbps by 2020 and 1 Gbps), thereby allowing for mass-use of up-to-date resource-intensive online content (HD video, modern multimedia apps, etc.) both at home and in the classroom. 
• Creating modern educational environments with industry-standard space layout and equipment.
• Annually creating 70 thousand extra daycare slots for younger preschoolers.
• Constructing 2,000 new modern schools to resolve the problem of study in shifts, and fully renovating another 5,000 schools that lack the appropriate L&D infrastructure.  
• Upgrading school facilities and related infrastructure in rural areas, including by creating integrated cultural, educational and sports compounds and repairing 12.5 thousand school buses.  

Expected Result

All Russian schools will feature modern facilities and technical infrastructure to ensure comfortable and effective learning.

Equal Education Opportunity for All

Many Russian children suffer academic underachievement and socialization issues which all harm their prospects for all-round developmental and social mobility. This is attributable to the fact that both families and schools often lack adequate resources to support less successful youngsters in overcoming these roadblocks.

Measures Required

• Providing education vouchers to families with older preschoolers between ages 6 and 7. This target allowance will help cover tuition for school prep courses that parents may wish to enroll their children in to boost their school-entry ability.
• Providing target support to disadvantaged families, including free extra classes to improve the performance on the core curriculum, extracurricular activities, out-of-school L&D opportunities such as vouchers for summer schools, recreation & health centers, etc.   
• Creating additional jobs for speech therapists, counselors and tutors in vulnerable communities.
• Raising scholarships awarded to the least advantaged student cohorts to a minimum of 80% of the regional subsistence level. 

Expected Result

Improved educational equity will empower many more of the less privileged unlocking sound prospects for successful careers and lives well lived.

New Technology Education

In most schools, technology classes have not changed for decades, while the existing curricula and technical equipment at vocational colleges no longer meet the requirements of the modern-day industry and labor market. Therefore, technology education in Russia should receive a radical overhaul in order to be able to prepare appropriately skilled professionals as an indispensable foundation on which a new momentum for the country’s technology-intensive sectors can be created.  

Measures Required

• Upgrading technology education in secondary and vocational schools; setting up state-of-the-art training workshops; establishing a system of Quantorium children’s R&D parks; harnessing educational resources of vocational colleges and universities to introduce more effective formats (including online learning) and programs of technological training at schools.
• Designing and mass-introducing cutting-edge digital simulator solutions to build an edge in delivering top-priority competencies to schoolers.
• Converting about 30% of vocational programs into applied Bachelor’s programs, and yet another 30%, into fast-track courses for specific qualifications at rapid training centers.

Expected Result

Up to 40% of schoolers will demonstrate high literacy in key technological areas. Graduates in applied Bachelor’s programs will be equipped with relevant in-demand qualifications enjoying increased market appeal and salary premiums.

Supporting and Developing Talent

The Russian system for identifying and supporting talent is still rather limited in its extent and scope, as it only covers 7% of children and about 4% of the labor market. The existing talent support framework is focused on core academic subjects, arts and sports, while overlooking such crucial areas as children’s technological R&D, entrepreneurship, social sciences and a range of other fields outside general schooling.

Measures Required

• Allowing students at every school to pursue advanced study of any subject they are keen on (in cooperation with specialized universities and through modern digital formats). Setting up a robust system for career guidance and specialist training for high schoolers (Grades 10 and 11).  
• Establishing 40 Sirius-type gifted education centers across Russia, offering training to up to 58 thousand students annually.  
• Subsidizing up to 50% of university tuition for fee-paying students and students who live away from home (provided they have scored a minimum of 80 points on their Unified State Exam or won an academic Olympiad).  

Expected Result

About 90% of school students will be engaged in advanced-study programs; the population of students covered by various talent incentives will double; ‘brain drain’ losses are projected to halve.

Fostering Continuing Learning & Development

So far, Russia has had one of the world’s lowest indicators of adult participation in continuing L&D, with only 17–20% of adults reported to pursue ongoing upskilling and reskilling. A situation where continuing L&D rates for Russian population have been 2–3 times below those in Europe significantly stunts labor productivity and welfare gains.

Measures Required

• Ensuring every working-age citizen can engage in quality upskilling and/or reskilling programs based on universities’ distance learning formats and MOOCs, followed by comprehensive competency evaluations and job placement assistance (under terms of public co-funding for working citizens, and full public coverage of tuition, certification and other relevant costs for non-working individuals).
• Establishing at least 200 Adult Education Centers on the basis of vocational, university and corporate L&D infrastructure. Converting legacy distance learning programs into up-to-date ICT-assisted educational offerings.
• Creating a Uniform National Online Platform for navigating educational offerings and job assistance services, including opportunities for retired individuals.

Expected Result

Annual participation in adult learning will improve to 40% over a five-year horizon.

Universities As Innovation Hubs

As global experience shows, universities are increasingly becoming a fundamental linchpin in spurring technology innovation and economic growth at both regional and national levels.

Measures Required

• Bolstering entrepreneurial competencies among students, including by promoting online courses by top universities to constitute at least a third of tertiary education programs.  
• Transferring to universities the existing regional infrastructure for supporting innovation (e.g., business incubators, business accelerators, innovative R&D centers, technology parks, etc.).
• Providing competitive funding to 100 universities to support regional economic development programs and to another 25 universities, to support development programs for individual economic sectors.
• Allocating 200 competitive grants to leading universities participating in university–industry collaboration endeavors. Providing at least 10 grants every year to support long-term cooperation programs between academic and R&D organizations that aim to foster integrated regional and sectorial development projects. 

Expected Result

At least 10% of university graduates will stay in their respective regions to pursue various innovative projects.

Fostering Basic Research

Today, Russia’s R&D spans as little as 5% of the world’s market niches in advanced science and technology, 3–4 times below the rates reported for the GDP peer nations. It turns out that Russian science has this far had only very limited participation in cutting-edge global R&D, which may engender major technological and security threats going forward.

Measures Required

• Expanding programs to boost global academic competitiveness, whereby new advanced venues to pursue world-class R&D will be deployed at 40 universities. Creating at least 50 international excellence centers to cover various priority areas of science and technology and employ at least 10 thousand foreign research staff. 
• Increasing funding for long-term (5–10 years) basic and exploratory R&D programs at leading universities and centers.
• Creating academic universities through partnerships between research universities and institutes at the Russian Academy of Sciences to foster student participation in high-impact R&D. 
• Attracting top-prospect Russian and international researchers (salaries of high-achieving scholars co-funded by the state on a parity basis; grants to doctoral researchers on par with the region’s average pay; duration of doctoral course extended to 4–5 years).

Expected Result

Russia’s R&D outputs will double; the number of universities in top 200 of global subject rankings will reach 20 by 2024 and 40 by 2035.

Educational Export

Despite its formally well-developed system for exporting professional education, Russia has this far failed to earn adequate proceeds in this market niche. While Australia enrolls just as many foreign students, its revenues from educational exports are 18 times those in Russia.

Measures Required

• Ensuring educational environments feature best-standard infrastructure enabling decent opportunities for effective learning and recreation (renovating and building new modern facilities for training, accommodation, sports, etc.; ensuring at least 90% of academic staff are proficient in English; simplifying migratory procedures, etc.).
• Introducing a grant system to boost the enrollment of talented foreign students, with special emphasis devoted to Master’s and doctoral programs in top-priority areas.   

Expected Result

Proceeds from educational exports will expand to 1% in Russia’s total export revenues by 2024.

Updating School Curriculum

The content of Russian schooling needs to be upgraded by promoting global best practices in L&D, with the principal emphasis given to deploying new curricula and instructional frameworks for effectively developing 21st-century skills and modern core literacies.

Measures Required

Updating educational standards and syllabi in such a way as to cohesively factor in the needs for nurturing higher cognitive faculties and metasubject skills in younger population cohorts (e.g., growth mindset and self-directed learning, multifaceted critical thinking and resourcefulness, etc.).

Expected Result

By 2024, Russian school students will achieve sound mastery in 21st-century skills comparable to levels demonstrated by their OECD peers; about 90% of graduates will be able to successfully pass the national test in basic financial, digital and legal literacy.

Human Resources for Education Development

Successful development of Russian education will depend heavily on the competence and motivation of its human resources. Modern L&D requires that education professionals at various levels be well versed in a range of organizational facets and equipped with state-of-the-art ‘tools of the teacher’s trade,’ including high ICT literacy, a profound understanding of personality and developmental psychology, ability to design effective individual learning paths, etc.

Measures Required

• Delivering upskilling courses to management teams at all L&D organizations across educational levels. Introducing certification procedures entitling teachers to a pay rise as a measure to foster teacher motivation for ongoing professional development and active mastery of modern instructional approaches and techniques.  
• Upgrading teacher training programs to emphasize hands-on curriculum components and introducing post-degree support systems for entry-level teachers, in order to facilitate improvements in educational outcomes and to raise the prestige of the teaching profession.     

Expected Result

Teaching will enter top 5 in-demand professions in Russia by 2024, while the minimum teacher pay will grow to 125% of the region’s average wage level.