Sviatlana Matskevich: We are lagging behind the European educational trend for several decades

There is no movement within the educational system in Belarus; it is canned as sprats in the bank and filled with odd audience.

Starting from September 1 teaching staff will get a salary increase. Will it stimulate teacher’s work?

Where the Belarusan system of education is moving and whether positive shifts are to be expected? EuroBelarus Information Service talked about it with Sviatlana Matskevich, an expert of the Agency of Humanitarian Technologies, the candidate of pedagogical sciences.

- What we are to expect from the new academic year? Are there any positive shifts in the education sector?

- For now I don’t see any grounds to claim that there are any positive shifts, as any development starts from establishment of some concepts, new ideas, vision of what education should look like. Thus, it is intellectuals that start any educational reform. And it is leaders in this sphere that should set the trend and possibility for development.

I haven’t seen anything like that yet, at least from the governmental management bodies. The only thing that is always claimed at the higher level is that the educational sphere shouldn’t be reformed. Well, it is quite understandable, as everyone is tired of the reforms, though they didn’t, actually, take place.

The definition “reform” is discredited. And it is very risky for the politicians to make statements about reforms in humanitarian sphere.

We can’t say that there will be positive shifts in this sphere. First, it is clear that there are no other concepts. Secondly, human resources are fully withdrawn from the education sphere. And it is impossible to restore human resources for one-two years. It is a long-time work, for decades.

The only thing that the education can be “proud” of is really huge outflow of personnel.

- Starting from September 1, according to the Council of Ministers, teaching staff will get a salary raise. How stimulating will it be for the teachers’’ work?

- Yes, this is the only thing the authorities are claiming. But the thing is that the regulation of salary in social and cultural spheres is always only catching up average salary in the country. And the mechanism that regulates it is not stipulated by some conceptual vision and meaningful change in this sphere.

Of course, teachers’ work should be encouraged. But the question is who has stayed in the educational system and whom we are still able to encourage? The remaining personnel are very odd public. There are very few those for whom teaching is vocation, and they can work for any salary. This category of teachers shouldn’t be encouraged; they deserve getting a really good salary. And I don’t know those people who go to an educational institution in order to earn money; it is impossible to do it there.

Usually salary rises in the educational sphere are negligible. Even if one million Belarusan rubles (approx. $100) is added to the teachers’ salary, in the situation of inflation and harsh price rise this money is quickly depreciated. So it is impossible to encourage work through salary rise now; such decisions are very overdue, not only in the educational system, but also in the health system as well.

- Catastrophically low level of knowledge among university applicants is now openly discussed in the Ministry for Education. Uladzimir Dunaeu, former vice-chancellor of European Humanities University, a member of the Public Bologna Committee, a professor of philosophy, also mentioned that the quality of education in high school has tremendously decreased, while the situation with the higher education is a catastrophe. From your point of view, hos can we stop this vicious circle?

- The situation that we are in now is the result of a long-term work; we won’t make any changes in a year or two, we need decades for that. And we should prepare these changes in advance.

Assessing the situation in the system of education today we assess our work of fifteen years ago. And when we talk about education, we always mean clients, our students, and their quality, while now we shouldn’t talk about consumers!

We should discuss the goals of education, its development strategies, cadres, processes, new technologies, financial support, everything that stipulates results in the education sphere; i.e. the management system and elaboration of development programs.

This is an absolutely different sphere, something that is always hidden from consumers.

The most surprising thing is that it is students’ problems that are discussed in media, while it is work that establishes the basis for education of high quality that is to be discussed in public instead, and over the last 20 years I haven’t seen such discussions in mass media. Only populist topics in this sphere are discussed, though Belarus has quite a number of conceptual developments in education.

- What is the place of Belarus in the global educational system? And what is the direction that our domestic education is moving to?

- It isn’t moving; it stands still, and I don’t see sources for development there.

But it seems to me that decision-makers in this sphere haven’t decided on the direction yet: should we go to Europe, or somehow coordinate with Russia, or create our own unique national educational system.

I think that now our educational system is too inertial; it is too much evolutionally natural, so I don’t know where we will come eventually.

If we touch upon the higher education, of course, there is a chance that we enter Bologna process: Belarus is to submit an appeal in 2015 and Europe might make concessions and include us into the process.

But even if it happens, it would be much overdue, as now Europe is questioning the efficiency of the bologna process and is searching for the new forms and elaborating new educational programs. So we don’t fit into the European trend, and are lagging behind it for several decades, I think.

Orientation on the Russian education is not a variant, too – it is already in the state of crisis! Having entered the Bologna process, Russia is now experiencing big stress in the educational system. And Bologna process is not curing the educational system at the post-Soviet area; it might be even deteriorating it.

Thus, Bologna process is not a cure-all, as it might seem at times. And it might not even be the way we should orientate to.

So the last option is to concentrate on our own national educational system and little by little raise our own human resources. We should analyze the situation in the sphere differently, admitting that it is in distress, but start looking for new development sources.

And we should set the tendency to look for the development sources, as for now we are going into nowhere…

I predict quite high outflow of applicants from our country. An applicant is still a consumer, and is looking for a high-quality education for an affordable price. The question is how to bring the specialists who got their education abroad back home? Besides, how to modernize and change the system of education inside the country? Still, the emphasis should be placed on the pedagogical staff, not students.