Russian Schools Employ Almost as Many Teachers of English as Instructors in Russian, Official Data Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 6 – Russia’s schools now employ 103,000 teachers of English compared to 125,000 instructors in Russian and Russian literature, a striking figure given the Kremlin’s obsession with promoting Russian and Russian culture and raising the question of whom Russian schools are preparing their graduates for.

            But while that statistic threatens to become an anecdote, official figures show that the country’s just under 40,000 schools lack teachers in many key subjects, Yevgeny Chernyshov of Nakanune says (docs.edu.gov.ru/document/70ecc3b178e0b8397d234697c42e0ad8/ analyzed at nakanune.ru/articles/120289/).

            Russia has approximately 1,040,000 teachers, including 320,000 for its primary schools and 700,000 for its secondary schools. The situation in both is dire but that in secondary schools especially so. One-third of them do not have teachers of physics, geography, biology, and IT sciences and half do not have anyone teaching chemistry.

            Schools in rural areas on average lack half of the teachers they need to do their jobs, but the situation is about to get much worse: Chernyshov reports that the education ministry’s own figures show that 43 percent of all teachers in Russia are above retirement age. That means that more will retire and some even die without being replaced.