How they are left for the second year, and whether they can be kicked out of school. Preferential conditions for poor students are legalized Grades are not always an indicator

Recent information about the new order of the Ministry of Education and Science on the approval of the new Procedure for the organization and implementation of educational activities in basic general education programs has clearly baffled teachers, head teachers, and principals. The reason is the unclear wording of this document, which allows one to draw completely opposite conclusions.

Let me make a reservation right away: the order of the educational department is in no way epoch-making or revolutionary - such industry-specific guidance documents appear in the overwhelming majority of Russian departments and are not a sensation at all. These are, so to speak, working moments.

And, if you look at it, the Ministry of Education and Science, one of the most favorite objects of criticism for teachers, and for journalists, and for deputies of all levels, and even for satirists of various types (from “Kamedi” to Zadornov), is precisely for this specific work order Still, there’s nothing to pick at.

Another thing is that journalists very often have to perform the duties of a kind of translator from “bureaucratic” into Russian, and they are not always able to delve into the language of a high-office, commanding primary source, inaccessible to “mere mortals”. I dug up this already sensational order on the ministry’s website. I'll try to translate it as I understood it myself. After all, he is a candidate of philosophical sciences.

And I understood that the next “mandatory” innovation from the Ministry of Education and Science formalizes de jure what has long existed de facto in many Russian schools. Schoolchildren will be able to move to the next grade, even if they have bad grades in their diaries. That is, poor students will no longer be retained for the second year; instead, they will be transferred to the next grade and taught according to an individual plan, requiring the closure of previous “tails”. And this is not even an instruction from the ministry, but its recognition of an already existing situation.

The opportunity to stay for repeated studies will help the child, as they say, not to end up on the street. At the same time, students and their parents retain the right to receive at least a certificate of education and leave the educational organization. And such changes are associated with the transfer of schools to the system of “higher educational institutions”, when a student has the right to move to the next course with several “tails”, but with the condition of their closure within a certain period.

Thus, the state “washes its hands” of the mighty task of re-educating complete idiots and poor students and at the same time provides them with the opportunity to still realize their legal right to free education. But at the same time, it takes into account the individual characteristics and family circumstances of each individual child.

Ninth-graders will also get a second chance. If one of them fails the state final assessment (GIA), then, at the request of parents or guardians, the child will be able to stay in school for a second year. This is a serious relaxation: previously such people were expelled without a certificate.

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education and Science Oleg Smolin commented on this in an interview with RG: “It is better not to leave those who have not passed the GIA for the second year, unless there are any special circumstances. And, as before, send them to colleges to master working specialties. In general, I think that the teacher council together with the parents should decide whether to keep the child or transfer him to the next grade.”

Not all of us with poor students are idiots; after all, anything can happen in life. Let us remember, for example, how the children who later became great studied: Bill Gates was a complete failure, and Chekhov repeated the second year twice! And Einstein was a C student... No offense to excellent students, but life increasingly suggests that success, career growth, and, by and large, talent and even genius do not depend on grades. But nonetheless…

Many professional teachers believe that this measure may provoke “certain” schoolchildren to completely, so to speak, “give up” on their studies. Well, okay, the order seems to have been sorted out. How are things going in general with the Russian poor students who have existed at all times - Tsarist, Soviet, Novorossiysk? What do experienced specialists think about this problem?

Only a student with academic debt can be retained for the second year, subject to the consent of his parents.

In order to retain a student for a second year, the educational organization is obliged to strictly follow the procedure that is provided.

Before raising the issue of repeating a student for the second year, the school administration is obliged to create conditions for eliminating academic debt. This last requirement does not apply to students in grades 4 and 9. Since they cannot be promoted to the next grade conditionally, the question of leaving them for the second year can be accepted until the moment when the school can give an opportunity to correct the grades.

The second mandatory condition is a written statement from the parents. According to the Law, retention for a second year of students with academic debt is carried out “at the discretion of the parents.” If the parents are against it, the school administration does not have the right to leave the student for repeated studies.

If a student does not have bad marks on the results of the intermediate certification, the school does not have the right to leave him for a second year, even if his parents insist on this, since this is not provided for by the Law.

You can obtain complete information about the procedure for intermediate certification in the local regulations of the school. Studying them will help you understand when the certification is carried out, in what form and whether there are additional conditions. Where to find and how to analyze local acts is discussed in detail in our video explanation -

Quote from the Law, Article 58:

Article 58. Interim certification of students

1. Mastering the educational program (except for the educational program of preschool education), including a separate part or the entire volume of an academic subject, course, discipline (module) of the educational program, is accompanied by intermediate certification of students, carried out in the forms determined by the curriculum, and in the manner established by the educational organization.

2. Unsatisfactory results of the intermediate certification in one or more academic subjects, courses, disciplines (modules) of the educational program or failure to pass the intermediate certification in the absence of valid reasons are recognized as academic debt.

3. Students are required to eliminate academic debt.

4. Educational organizations, parents (legal representatives) of a minor student, providing students with general education in the form of family education, are obliged to create conditions for the student to eliminate academic debt and ensure control over the timeliness of its elimination.

5. Students with academic debt have the right to undergo intermediate certification in the relevant academic subject, course, discipline (module) no more than twice within the time frame determined by the organization carrying out educational activities, within one year from the date of formation of academic debt. This period does not include the student’s illness, academic leave or maternity leave.

6. To conduct intermediate certification for the second time, the educational organization creates a commission.

7. It is not allowed to charge students for passing intermediate certification.

8. Students who have not passed the intermediate certification for valid reasons or who have academic debt are conditionally transferred to the next grade or to the next course.

9. Students studying in an educational organization in educational programs of primary general, basic general and secondary general education, who have not eliminated academic debt within the established time frame from the moment of its formation, at the discretion of their parents (legal representatives) are left for repeated training, transferred to training in adapted educational programs programs in accordance with the recommendations of the psychological, medical and pedagogical commission or for training according to an individual curriculum.

The other day, the next academic year ended in most Russian schools. Since September, there have been rumors that for the first time in the history of Soviet and post-Soviet education, it will bring a formal ban on repeating a year: children will supposedly be promoted to the next grade in any case, regardless of their level of knowledge. However, no official instructions were received from the Ministry of Education and Science during the year. At the same time, according to experts, the informal ban on remaining in the same class has been in effect for a long time and, unfortunately, does not bring anything good to the school system. The website "Arguments of the Week" writes about this.

As she explained to an AN correspondent Anna Vavilova, Deputy Director of the Center for Applied Legal Developments of the Institute of Education of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, at the legislative level, the possibility of a student to stay for a second year and the procedure for such leaving today enshrined in Art. 58 of the Law “On Education”, which talks about intermediate certification of students. If at the end of the year a child does not pass this certification - roughly speaking, he writes transferable tests for two - he develops so-called academic debt (the terminology for schools and universities in this case is the same). He must eliminate it starting from September of the new school year for a time set by the school itself. If a student fails to pass recertification twice, the educational institution is obliged to offer the parent three options: transfer the child to education according to an individual plan, choose a class or school with an adapted program, or switch to re-education in the same class, that is, leave the child for the second year . If a parent feels that the school is trying to falsify the certification results and he personally does not agree with them, they can be challenged.

“Responsibility for ensuring that a child under 15 years of age masters educational programs today lies with the authorities - departments and administrations of education, as well as directly with schools,” continues the topic Irina Abankina, Director of the Institute for Educational Development, National Research University Higher School of Economics. – If problems arise, you need to understand their causes, and if a child regularly attended classes, but for some reason experiences serious difficulties with his studies, the school is obliged to look for ways to eliminate the problems. For example, set individual deadlines for mastering programs, place students in lower grades for some lessons - in general, create all the conditions for successful studies. A second year may also be an option. I will not hide that the task is difficult, not all schools can cope with it, but this does not negate the need to solve the problem. In addition, I would like to emphasize that the volume of per capita funding remains the same, with the exception of situations when a child is taken to family education.”

Thus, from a legislative point of view, everything looks more than smooth. However, reality, unfortunately, once again diverged from the beautiful theory. In particular, as Anna Vavilova notes, today all the options listed in the law are quite difficult to implement in practice.

“Let’s take for example a situation where a parent believes that it is better for the child to stay for a second year,” argues A. Vavilova. – The law does not allow you to choose this option, like any other, without failing recertification. At the same time, a powerful “pitfall” in this situation is that the school is free to set its own recertification deadlines. It's good if it's a week or a month at most. But the law allows this period to be extended up to a year. As a result, it may happen that an underperforming sixth-grader will “conditionally” sit in the seventh grade all year, not learning anything, and in May, when the time comes, he will expectedly fail the sixth-grader certification and, by law, will have to go there in September. In the end, nothing good comes of it. The situation with adaptation programs and the possibility of drawing up an individual plan today is also very difficult. In most cases, teachers and administrators do not have the time or other resources to fully plan and implement the education of “difficult” children. It turns out to be a vicious circle, from which there is no way out yet.”

Nevertheless, as practice shows, in general, the Russian school system has adapted in its own way to “solving problems” with low-performing students. Unfortunately, the solution was found not in developing a correction system following the European example, but in creating the impression that weak students are minimum quantity or simply none. The reason is banal to the point of impossibility. The performance of schools today is judged solely by formal, “paper” indicators. The picture is spoiled solely by “inconvenient” figures, such as the number of children who did not pass the intermediate assessment. If you quietly give a weak student a C instead of a D and put him in the next class, ignoring the fact that he “does not cope” with the program, the inspectors will not have any questions about the school. Deuces and so on, on the contrary, will raise a lot of questions and accusations of poor work and inability to teach properly. It is obvious that no one needs unnecessary problems - and in the end we have what we have: a beautiful picture and often a catastrophically low level of knowledge, sometimes without the slightest attempt to rectify the situation.

“In my opinion, there is a certain sense in leaving for a second year. This is useful for at least two reasons: to avoid torturing children and to avoid self-soothing, - comments Mikhail Abramov, academician of the Russian Academy of Education. – When absolutely everyone is transferred to the next grade, we simply turn a blind eye to the degradation of the general education system, which has already reached catastrophic proportions. But here, alas, they prefer to ignore problems in this area rather than solve them...”

Grades are not always an indicator

What adds piquancy to the new order of the Ministry of Education and Science is the fact that in a huge number of Russian schools today there are simply no poor students. But not at all because schoolchildren began to study better. For every D grade (and even more so for every repeat student), the teacher will receive a severe reprimand from the Regional Educational Institution or the Department of Education. According to today's logic, if a careless student does not want to study, his teachers are to blame. The result is “we write three, two in our minds.” To avoid scolding, it is easier to put an undeserved C in the magazine than an objective “unsatisfactory”. This state of affairs teaches the student not to study: after all, a C grade is still guaranteed. So the new document, by and large, will not change anything. And if it does change, then, according to teachers, it will be for the worse.

“The ban on leaving schoolchildren for a second year deprives teachers of one of the possible ways of working with low-performing students,” says Anastasia Lopukhina,Russian language teacher. – In my opinion, in the second year, and in agreement with him or his parents, it is possible to leave not only a child with developmental delays or behavioral deviations, but also a child who has not had time to intellectually mature to perceive and analyze complex information. There should be no standards or general rules in this matter. Even the number of bad grades is not always an indicator: bad grades can have different reasons. For example, if a child starts school too early or skips a grade, he may not have time to develop skills that his older classmates already have.”

“The fact that the child no longer runs the risk of finding himself in a new team, and initially in the position of an obvious outsider, is rather positive,” he says Nadezhda Sokolova, French teacher. “Perhaps they are counting on the fact that underachievers will follow their classmates.” However, as a side effect, we may end up with an even greater decrease in motivation among students who are already struggling. After all, they will know for sure: no matter how poorly they study, there will not be such serious consequences as before.”

According to a number of experts, the ban on leaving schoolchildren for a second year will equate schools to universities. After all, failing students are also not left for the second year: they continue their studies in the next year and at the same time take the “tails”. However, the load, which is noticeable for an adult, is unlikely to be within the capabilities of a child. An underachieving student simply cannot cope with the double volume of lessons and homework. Or he will cope, but at the cost of his own health. It has long been known how a “reinforced” school schedule with 8–9 lessons a day affects a child’s body. So such a scheme is hardly acceptable at school.

“The transfer of education into the service sector is accompanied by the introduction of new criteria – criteria for the service sector,” the teacher sums up Nina Sedykh. – The client must be satisfied with the service, receive it in the amount he wants, from pleasantly smiling people, according to a certain standard - and not overwork. Additional services can also be obtained, but for an additional fee. Until recently, this was precisely the course Russian education followed. If we want to teach people to think, we must move away from this system. No standard can replace the personality of a teacher. A certain amount of rigor and coercion is mandatory - without it it is impossible to organize the learning process. The criterion for evaluating a teacher’s work should not depend on how many bad marks he gives. Education is a process in which two parties participate: the teacher and the student. And third: the student’s parents. Today, only the teacher is responsible for this process. But the lack of rights of a teacher at school, when he cannot not only take a young scoundrel out of class by the ear, but also simply scold him, causes deep sadness. It turns out that the teacher is forbidden to outline the boundaries of behavior, beyond which the student is not allowed. In general, I am in favor of leaving a student for a second year and giving fairly earned D’s. Because the student also owes something to the teacher. Must study!"

Additional argument

Ninth-graders who were unable to pass the state final certification (GIA) will be able to come back to study in ninth grade. Previously, such children were released from school with a certificate instead of a certificate. Now they have the right to a second attempt - which, however, requires parental permission. And if someone’s “particularly principled” father decides that a child with poor grades should be punished, the student will be left without a document on secondary education. In such a situation, there is only one way - to institutions of secondary vocational education. However, not everyone welcomes the idea of ​​giving a second chance after 9th grade.

“It turns out that the limit after which a child who does not want to study will have to come to his senses is the end of 9th grade,” comments Anastasia Lopukhina.– After all, only after this moment will it be allowed to leave for a second year. Why not after the 8th or 6th? Gaps in knowledge could arise not only in 9th grade, but even earlier!”