Paul Goble
Staunton, Mar. 31 – Secondary schools in the Russian Federation have such low standards that Russia’s universities are forced to spend an enormous amount of time providing students with knowledge that the country’s secondary schools used to and should but no longer do, Nikolay Patrushev says.
This sad fact of life, the Presidential assistant who head the country’s Maritime Board, told a meeting devoted to improving the quality of mathematics and natural science training in Russia, isn’t reflected in test scores but in life itself first in the universities and then in the professions (nakanune.ru/news/2026/3/31/22865093/).
According to Nakanune journalist Yevgeny Chernyshov, Patrushev was likely basing his argument on the basis of a study which showed that “the majority of students” at St. Petersburg’s Mining University “possess virtually no familiarity with physics” when they arrive and thus have to be brought up to speed by the university itself.
Pastrushev said that he is convinced that “it is already too late to try to fix things at the university level. Instead, the schools must be improved rather than praised, something that will require that “teachers have the opportunity to focus on teaching rather than on having up to two full-time loads just to make ends meet.”
Specifically, the Putin aide called for “salary increases for mathematics, physics and chemistry teachers, warning that as a result of a lack of proficiency in these subjects among graduates, Russia will soon find itself with absolutely no specialists left to serve the shipbuilding industry and the navy.”
What Patrushev did not say but what is likely on his mind and even more on those of his listeners is that the sad state of pre-university education in the Russian Federation is to a large extent the result of Vladimir Putin’s educational optimization programs and shift of money from schools to finance the war in Ukraine.
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