On April 7 at the sitting of the Standing Committee on Science, Education, Culture and Youth Affairs the Government-submitted bill “On Pre-School Education,” which presented Sergo Yeritzyan, RA Minister of Education and Science. The Minister noted that there are many things to do in the sphere of pre- school and informed that strategic program of regulating that sphere was submitted to RA Government and approved. In this sphere the first step shall be the development of the minimum conditions of criteria and licensing. The submitted draft law regulates the legal, organizational and financial bases of the activity and development of pre-school education. The forms of the educational institutions, age groups, overloading, status, power, the teaching-educational demands and conditions were presented.

Committee Chairwoman Hranush Hakobyan noticed that the key problem requires package solution, in the aspect of structure and wordings the draft is vulnerable, the sphere is not observed in the chain of educational system. They should not review the fixed powers by law of the local self-government bodies, but they should find mechanisms of jointly fulfilling the state policy. It is also necessary to fix distinct provisions of organizing financial problems and work with families in the bill. The law should propose mechanisms for solution of the key problem of the education of pre-school children, but not give objectives. Mrs. Hakobyan proposed to put the bill on the big agenda and jointly debate it before putting it on the four-day sittings and substantiate by package solution, which the Committee approved.

Mrs. Hakobyan also submitted the bills “On Mandatory Sample of the Documents” and “On Adding the RA law ‘On Administrative Offences.’” She informed that the Ministry of RA Culture and Youth Affairs envisages submitting to the National Assembly a similar bill. As Mrs. Hakobyan assessed, that was the right of the Ministry, and she, as MP, proposed to put into circulation the submitted bill and expected the proposals of the Ministry. The Committee endorsed the proposal of putting the bill on the agenda of the session.

The Committee debated and warranted to put on the four-day sittings agenda the agreements “On the Cooperation in the Sphere of Education between the RA Ministry of Education and Science and RF Ministry of Education and Science” and the bills “On the Education of Persons Being in Need of Special Conditions of Education,” “On Amending and Adding the RA Law ‘On RA Holidays and Remembrance Days.’”