Publications

The publication presents the results of the analysis of the regulation of the extracurricular education sector in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Extracurricular education is considered as part of the right to education in international legal regulation. The role and place of extracurricular education in the educational system from the standpoint of international organizations are revealed. The approaches of post-Soviet countries to the normative definition of extracurricular education, ensuring the conditions for its receipt are described. Countries are differentiated according to the degree of elaboration of the legislative regulation of extracurricular education, prioritization and approaches to the development of extracurricular education in national strategies and concepts of education development.

In a moving world, the concept of competency appears flexible enough to adapt to the needs of societies and economies. From a more individual perspective, the development of skills that can be valued in the labor market would be a means of increasing employability. There are several challenges that students face when entering the job market in Russia. This note analyses several national policies within European countries that develop instruments to identify their economic migrant needs, even if one of the most glaring result is that there is currently no European common policy on economic migration and labor market needs. Nevertheless, the European Commission is trying new approaches in identifying sectors with unfilled vacancies. This note also elaborates on the success of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) approaches that consist of awarding full qualifications, partial qualifications, credits toward a qualification, exemption for access to higher education, and/or exemption of all or part of the curriculum to applicants that have been assessed and have proven that their experiential learning outcomes meet the standards used in the higher education system. The first part of this note identifies the obstacles that prevent international students from staying in Russia after their studies and integrating into the labor market. The regulation of the labor market and the lack of employability of these students are highlighted. These issues are rather specific to Russia and, therefore, Section III on international experiences show the added value of international students to the development of the stock of human capital and competencies.

COVID -19 pandemic has changed the functioning of all levels of education systems. Schools and universities had to  quickly adapt and change their procedures according to conditions created by the epidemic. Long perceived as additional and backup solutions, diff erent distance learning technologies, particularly internet-based, became the main solution for the continuation of education on all levels. Several issues have stood out particularly with this seismic change – one of those is the issue of fi nal examinations in universities. This issue is especially crucial in Russia, where the successful passing of a state final examination, which combines majority of the topics from the study program, is a prerequisite for graduation. This paper aims to analyze and present diff erent strategies which were used for fi nal university examinations in diff erent countries and universities of the world and compare it with the Russian practices.

This article traces the evolution of the debate on the balancing of federal and regional competences in regulating the use of minority languages in Russia’s education system. Taking into account relevant law and judicial practice, as well as developments in center-periphery relations since 2017, the article argues that the federal center has been increasingly depriving Russia’s republics of the ability to self-regulate in the education sphere – particularly over the question as to whether they may require the compulsory study of republican languages (recognized as co-official with Russian) in schools located within their administrative borders. These processes can be located in the context of the centralization of the education system and a corresponding reduction of multilingualism in Russia’s schools. This can, in turn, be seen as part of an underlying drive to promote national unity through uniformity, through the dilution of the country’s linguistic and cultural diversity and a concurrent emphasis on the primacy of the Russian language. The article further argues that the Russian education system’s centralization has been ongoing: while it has intensified since 2017, the trajectory of the jurisprudence shows an earlier movement towards a concern for ‘unity’ that anticipated it.

This article analyses changes to the language policy in Russia in 2017, and their effects on the state (national) languages of Russia’s republics within the education system. In July 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the Council on Interethnic Relations, addressing the language rights of the Russian-speaking population and stressing the existing limit of the power of Russia’s 22 ethnic republics to introduce compulsory study of their official languages. The President’s statements provoked widespread prosecutorial inspections in the republics’ schools and a new round of public discussion about language policy. Public discontent in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Komi led to protests against both ethnic Russians and the native speakers of languages recognised as co-official with Russian (‘state languages of the republics’). The authorities of some republics publicly disagreed with the position taken by the federal government. In other republics, however, the President’s speech did not trigger any public discussion. In many republics, it looks like the regional authorities will ultimately accept the decision of the federal government and speakers of republican languages will not actively defend their languages. Effectively, the balance of rights of the federation and the republics for the establishment of state languages, achieved in the 1990s, was violated.