On June 30 on the initiative of the NA Standing Committee on Science, Education, Culture and Youth there were parliamentary hearings at the National Assembly on the theme “12-Year Education: Educational Reforms” in which participated NA deputies, representatives of NGOs.

Hranush Hakobyan, Committee Chair noticed that recently the interest towards the transition to 12 year education increases, that with the realization of the necessity of changes there are also concerns and even complaints, and persuaded the crowded hall to take part in the debate of the issue of great public importance with questions and constructive suggestions.

Levon Mkrtchyan, RA Minister of Science and Education highlighted that the transition to 12- year education has to incline to responsibility and vigilance, set to purposeful and consistent work not only those, who are responsible for the sphere of education, but the whole society. The necessity of reforms, which comes from the content of education and from the aim to conform to the international educational criteria, should be clearly explained to our citizens. The educational system in the Soviet country with its ideology and criteria does not exist any more: there is a system of educational values conventionally called “European” in which there are many developed countries of the world. Here, Armenia does not have an alternative, but in order to provide a harmonious transition it is necessary to observe it as a part of the whole, clarify the purpose and be consistent. If there are defects in the educational system or in the legislative field regulating the sphere, we have to reform them, as the final purpose is the improvement of education quality and integration into the European educational system.

Norik Ghukasyan, Director of the National Institute of Education, presented the mechanisms of transition to 12-year general education, touched upon issues of providing with programs, textbooks and human resources.

Mr. Ghukasyan informed that the implementation of the 12-year education system has to begin in the 2006-2007academic year. This year two first grades will be formed with groups of ages 6 and 6,5. The pupils who have entered schools before 2000 will study and graduate with a 10-year program. In this case there are no changes of academic programs, and textbooks are not envisaged.

The implementation of the new criteria, programs, textbooks will begin from the 2006-2007 academic year according to the degrees and starting terms of subject teaching of 9-year general school. In this academic year the programs and textbooks of the Armenian language of 1^st and 5^th grades, Armenian language and literature of 7^th grade, mathematics of 5^th grade, algebra and geometry of 7^th grade, information science of 6^th grade will be implemented. Starting from the 2007-2008 academic year the new criteria and textbooks of natural and social science subjects will be implemented with the same principle.

In the years 2006-2010 works will be done for the formation of the three-year senior school.

In 2006 the retraining of 6500 Armenian language and literature teachers, 5400 mathematics teachers, 1250 information science teachers and 2500 class teachers will be finished.

According to the estimation of Eduard Ghazaryan, academician at RA National Academy of Sciences the transformations have to aim only the improvement of education quality and not simply the adoption of European values. While the experience has shown that during the recent years under the name of reforms some degrading paces have been made that are particularly connected with the augmentation of the pupils’ quantity in one class and of hours of a pay. The academician called for vigilance and consistency as returning the lost will be much more difficult.

Galust Sahakyan, NA deputy called not to hurry. It is true that the educational reforms are dictated by the necessity of not isolating from the world and improving the education quality, but the technical, property conditions are still low, there isn’t also a corresponding financing. Mr. Sahakyan assured that he will fight so that the schools which do not have corresponding conditions do not accept 6-year old children.

There were also other speeches and questions, in which together with the wish of educational reforms there were also concerns about insufficient material-technical base, sanitary-hygienic problems, the density of classes and the unclear criteria of stream education of senior school.

Agreeing with all the mentioned difficulties, the RA Minister of Science and Education Levon Mkrtchyan expressed his conviction that we have to not stop the transition to the new system, we have to be realistic. It is not possible to go ahead leaning only upon the memories we have to go ahead with purposeful and confident paces.

Admitting the necessity of evolutionary and not revolutionary educational reforms, Hranush Hakobyan, Committee Chair highlighted the importance of immediate solution of problems that impede the development of education, the clarification and perfection of the legislative field connected with the sphere.