EducationReformintheFormerSovietUnion.doc

Education Reform in the Former Soviet Union By Nick Clark, Editor WENR The education systems of the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union have undergone considerable changes over the past few years — changes that parallel broader shifts in social, economic and political life. ? The 15-year period since the dissolution of the Soviet Union has been one of extreme turbulence; in education, it has been marked by dramatic reductions in government budgetary allocations, rapidly declining academic standards and for many republics, increasing levels of administrative, institutional and academic corruption. This article provides a broad overview of some of the key problems facing governments of the region. It also discusses the reform measures they have introduced in their efforts to redress the declining standards of the 1990s and the unwanted vestiges of their shared Soviet past. Among these efforts are the introduction of unified national admissions tests — a measure that many countries in the region are employing to combat corruption — and reforms related to the Bologna Process, a major European educational reform and harmonization initiative that involves 45 signatory countries, of which nine are former Soviet republics. A Common History The education systems of all republics share a common history of centralization and state control that was based on a common set of principles believed to define socialist education, i.e., the inclusion of vocational instruction at the secondary level, the eradication of illiteracy, massification of educational opportunities and the incorporation of state ideology and moral education into the curriculum. Curriculum reform began in the late 1980s as individual republics began to introduce new courses in such disciplines as ethics and religion under the newfound freedoms of perestroika. With the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, new education laws were introduced and independent private schools proliferated. Howeve