The Russian Ministry of Education will allocate 75 million rubles in 2021 for the "Class" project to improve the Russian language proficiency in Uzbekistan, Acting Deputy Director of the Ministry's International Cooperation and Public Relations Department Olga Podberezkina said on Thursday.
In October 2020, the Education Ministry, the Ministry of Education of Uzbekistan and "Art, Science, Sports" charity foundation of Russian businessman and philanthropist Alisher Usmanov signed an agreement on the project "Class" to improve the Russian language skills in the republic. The program is being implemented by the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia and the Avloni Uzbek Institute for Retraining and Professional Development of Heads and Specialists of the National Education System.
A Russian-Uzbek roundtable on educational cooperation is taking place Thursday on the Expo-Russia Uzbekistan online platform.
"The Ministry of Education is allocating 75 million rubles for the "Class" 2021 project. This is the most large-scale and flagship project of the Ministry in Uzbekistan," Podberezkina said during the event.
The representative of the Ministry also separately noted the contribution of Usmanov, a native of Uzbekistan, who plans "to allocate funds for teachers' salaries within the framework of our agreement" until the end of the project in 2030.
According to the Ministry of Education, as part of the first phase of the project in 2020, 32 specialists from Russia tested about 4,000 local teachers and 500 students in all 14 regions of Uzbekistan on their knowledge of the Russian language. The first 100 teachers and methodologists will be sent to Uzbekistan in 2021 to work in schools, Podberezkina added.
The number of Russian-language and literature graduates does not even cover half of what is needed, and only about a third of the need in elementary schools, according to Uzbekistan's Ministry of Public Education. In recent years, Uzbekistan has implemented a number of projects to promote the Russian language learning in educational institutions.
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Based on materials from RIA Novosti