Up-to-date statistics was requested by the President from the Ministry of Education in the course of the working meeting. The head of the department noted that she was announcing preliminary information. There will be updated figures after September 15. According to the information available today, 44167 schoolchildren have started the school year. There are 17733 pupils in primary school (4559 of whom are first-graders), 13290 people attend grades 5–7, 8833 in grades 8–9, and 4311 schoolchildren in grades 10–11. More than 35 thousand children study in urban areas, and 9166 in rural areas. All primary pupils without exception will attend school from Monday to Friday; the length of the school week is determined for other grades by the educational institution, subject to the standards established by the Ministry of Education. Excursions and participation in cultural events are possible on Saturdays. The main subjects for pupils in grades 5-7 of most schools are included in the schedule of five school days. The exception is gymnasiums and lyceums, for whose schoolchildren Saturdays can be educational. The decision is made by the administration. This is the path taken by the Tiraspol Humanitarian and Mathematical Gymnasium and the Rybnitsa Russian Gymnasium. Schoolchildren from grades 8 to 11 of all lyceum and gymnasium classes will study six days a week. For high schoolchildren, disciplines for in-depth study, electives and preparation for the Unified State Exam are scheduled for Saturday.
The participants of the meeting noted that parents, when choosing an educational institution for their child, should take into account the difference in workload: lyceum and gymnasium education is more in-depth and requires more time and effort.
As for the events on Saturday they should not take place exclusively within the walls of the educational institution within the school curriculum, but involve trips, visits to various events and interesting places, the President reminded.
Another important topic of the meeting is the organization of meals in educational institutions. The President highlighted three aspects: equipping food units – kitchens and canteens, availability of personnel and provision of food products. There are no complaints about the third point. The program for repairing food units is being implemented in stages. The problem of personnel shortage is acute. The main reason is the low level of wages. The salary of specialists in this area is less than three thousand rubles according to the head of the capital. There are 21 vacancies in Tiraspol schools today, kindergartens are short of eight cooks and nine kitchen workers. Kindergarten No. 72 does not accept pupils precisely because of the lack of employees providing meals for preschoolers, said Oleg Dovgopol. A similar situation is in other cities of the republic. Head of Bendery Roman Ivanchenko outlined another aspect that requires discussion and decision-making: despite different workloads, kitchen workers have the same salary. This approach is unfair, the mechanism requires adjustments. There is a proposal to follow the path of servicing several neighboring institutions with one food unit. All these issues will be discussed in detail in the course of the extended government meeting.
