International platform

"EDUCATIONAL DIALOGUE:

OUR COMMON FUTURE"

Webinar No.1 at October 22, 2024

What is "good school"? Content of school education, educational technologies, current educational results

On 22 October 2024 an online webinar of the project — the international platform «Educational Dialogue: Our Common Future»

Moderator: Mikhail Vadimovich Gruzdev – Rector of Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushinsky (Russian Federation, Yaroslavl)

Speaker: Vladislav Andreevich Razumovsky, Deputy Head of the Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution «Institute for Educational Development Strategy» (Moscow, Russian Federation)

he webinar was joined by participants from Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, India, China, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Côte d’Ivoire and Cuba.

Good morning, dear colleagues!

I would like to welcome all the participants of the International Platform «Educational Dialogue: Our Common Future» who have joined our meeting!

Our communication today takes place within the framework of the second thematic area, «What is a «good school»?

In this regard, I would like to begin our conversation by noting that in our country, at some point, it became clear to everyone that in the field of education there was a need to develop and publicly coordinate the «image of the future» of the Russian school as an objective for all subjects of educational legal relations.

As the analysis of sociological research, the blogosphere of parents, teachers, students, and the media shows, a significant part of the parent and pedagogical community expressed dissatisfaction with the diversity and sometimes excessive variability of normative and methodological approaches in the country’s schools. After all, schools and teachers are always on a creative quest. As many teachers and principals noted, «we are at a crossroads, and we urgently need to understand the prospects for development.»

In this context, the question arose: what should a GOOD or even an IDEAL Russian school be?

The answer to this question is the project «School of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation,» the development of which began in 2022 on the initiative of the Minister of Education of the Russian Federation, Sergey Sergeevich Kravtsov. The idea of the project is to create an integral national educational system based on the following principles: the focus on the student; the fundamental role of the teacher; the integration of the best practices and traditions of domestic education from all periods of development of Russian society; ensuring the same quality of learning and educational conditions in every school in the country.

The project was based on the principle of the unity of education and upbringing, the educational space on the territory of the Russian Federation, which is enshrined in Article 3 of the Federal Law «On Education in the Russian Federation.» The main vector of the project’s development was the achievement of the national development goals of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030 and for the future up to 2036, in particular, the realisation of the potential of each person, the development of his talents, and the formation of a patriotic and socially responsible personality.

The preliminary work of the project included the study of effective management and pedagogical practices in the education system, as well as professional and public discussions with teachers, heads of educational organisations, and members of the All-Russian Expert Pedagogical Council in the field of general education (in total, more than 9 thousand people took part in the discussion). As a result of this work, eight main directions and key conditions for the activities of educational organisations within the framework of the project were identified.

«Knowledge«: unified approaches to planning and implementation of education—curricula, unified lines of textbooks, understandable calendar and thematic planning, lesson plans in accordance with SanPiN, unified requirements for objective assessment of the student’s educational progress, etc.

«Education«: formation of a holistic view of the world based on the traditions and history of Russia, a patriotic personality.

«Health«: assistance in maintaining and strengthening health, physical development, compliance with safety standards.

«Career guidance«: the possibility of professional trials, the formation of an image of a professional future.

«Creativity«: comprehensive and harmonious development of the child’s personality; search and development of talents; targeted support and recommendations to all participants in educational relations; networking with other educational organisations and social partners.

«Teachers. School team«: model staffing, uniform requirements for the system of support and stimulation of teachers, professional competitions, mentoring system.

«School climate«: prevention of deviant behaviour, recommendations for the creation of a favourable psychological climate, safety, comfort, motivational support.

«Educational environment«: use of digital systems to ensure educational activities, organisation of electronic document management, design of school premises.

In order to implement the main directions and ensure the key conditions of the project, a list of criteria and indicators was developed, reflecting the possibilities of improving educational activities and achieving higher educational results.

Three levels of compliance of a general educational organisation with the status of «School of the Ministry of Education of Russia» were identified, the achievement of which the school independently repeats during the automated self-diagnosis procedure.

So-called «critical» indicators have been introduced, the failure of which invalidates the results of the assessment of the state of the educational organisation and determines its status as «below the baseline» in the appropriate direction.

Thus, the main directions and key conditions and a list of criteria and indicators formed a system of guidelines for the activities of a general education organisation and the main expected results of its development. At the same time, it was regularly emphasised to all project participants that the mechanisms, ways, and means of achieving these results may be unique and inimitable, depending on the potential of school teams and specific algorithms of their activities.

In the first stage of the project implementation, the project was widely discussed socially and professionally in different places and professional groups. The requests of the management teams of the pilot regions involved in the testing (Republic of Bashkortostan, Khabarovsk Territory, Voronezh Region) were analysed, two all-Russian meetings were held with the region responsible for the implementation of the project. In 2022, the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation held public hearings on the project «School of the Ministry of Education of Russia» with the participation of the Minister of Education of the Russian Federation, S.S. Kravtsov.

To date, all regions of the Russian Federation are involved in the implementation of the project.

In order to provide methodological support for the project, a series of books has been published under the general title ‘The Principal’s Handbook’, containing practical materials and recommendations for the implementation of each of the main strands. There is a website to support the project.

But the education system never stands still and is sensitive to changes in the state and society!

In the current economic and geopolitical situation, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, has announced a course to save the country’s citizens! The most important thing,» says the President, «is to save people. This means helping our families, stimulating demographic processes, supporting young people, young families, families with children, and, of course, large families, educating the younger generation.».

Improving the quality of life, saving people, and developing human potential is largely determined by maintaining a respectful attitude towards work and the working person in society. As part of this direction, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation is actively working to raise the prestige of the teaching profession.

In particular, since January 2024, it has been implementing a project to reduce the bureaucratic burden on educational organisations and teaching staff. The project is being carried out jointly with the Rosatom State Corporation and is based on the introduction of lean production methods and tools into the activities of educational organisations.

The emphasis on the use of lean manufacturing is not accidental, as the President of the Russian Federation, in his address to the Federal Assembly on 29 February 2024, ordered the implementation of projects based on the introduction of lean manufacturing practices in all social institutions by 2030.

In the field of education, this project was called «Lean School».

The goal of the «Lean School» project was to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the activities of educational organisations through continuous improvement of the processes taking place in them by applying the principles, methods, and tools of lean production.

While working on the «Lean School» project, it became clear that in order to classify the intra-school processes, the optimisation and efficiency of which is achieved using lean production tools, it is necessary to consider the main areas of school activity highlighted in the «School of the Ministry of Education of Russia» project.

Thus, the “Lean School” project is currently considered from the point of view of the development of the project «School of the Ministry of Education of Russia,» which is inherently consolidating, including the implementation of both the project «School of the Ministry of Education of Russia» and other federal/regional projects (if any) aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of educational organisations in the context of the unified educational space of the Russian Federation.

To date, the “Lean School” project is actively developing in several regions of the Russian Federation, including the Perm and Krasnodar Territories, the Belgorod, Kemerovo, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, and Sakhalin Regions, the Republic of Chuvashia, etc.

We hope that after a short testing period, the Berezhnaya School (the Lean School project) will cover all regions of our country and become a logical continuation of the project «School of the Ministry of Education of Russia.» Berezhnaya School is an image of a GOOD SCHOOL, which is relevant today, solving global tasks—tasks of saving people, developing the potential of both students and their teachers.

That’s it for me! Thank you for your attention!

Questions:

V.A. Razumovsky:

At the moment the pilot schools are working within the current funding with the support of the regional authorities, who are actively involving them in the development of a more global project at the regional level, which is called the 'Effective Region'.

V.A. Razumovsky:

I would like to point out that this project is based on the methodology of lean production, which came to us from the economic sphere. This methodology is based on assigning different levels of complexity to processes in order to optimise them. In my opinion, which is perhaps still subjective, the greatest difficulty for our managers is to identify the processes that they consider to be the least important and that need to be made more efficient. However, after the implementation of the project, after the introduction of appropriate technologies from these small projects that have proven their effectiveness, the efficiency and effectiveness of the school as a whole increases significantly.

Заключение:

«I would like to draw the attention of our participants, and today we are humbled by colleagues from more than 10 countries to one idea. Vladislav Andreevich said that this pilot project has the main principle of operation. This main principle is the unity of the learning process and the education process. 10 years ago in Russia it was said that the task of the school was only to teach different subjects: mathematics, literature, history, etc. Now the educational policy of the Russian state is that the task of the headmaster, the teacher, is not limited to teaching different subjects but is to organise the educational process with schoolchildren. This educational work is not done only after classes. The task is to ensure that each subject—history, literature, geography—has its own educational potential.
Vladislav Andreevich, thank you very much! Today we have talked about the priorities of school education in Russia, but in the future we will talk about other aspects of Russian education».


M.V. Gruzdev, project coordinator, Rector of the Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushinsky, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Education

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