Damascus-Sana
The project of teaching the Russian language in schools, which was launched experimentally seven academic years ago, today reached 31 thousand students, but still suffers from a lack of qualified cadres that the Ministry of Education is working to avoid through several solutions, including broadcasting lessons through the three educational platforms.
The inclusion of the Russian language in the educational curriculum was launched experimentally in the academic year 2014-2015. The number of students currently receiving the Russian language reached 31 thousand students in 217 schools distributed over 12 governorates, while the teaching staff did not exceed 190 Russian language teachers until today, which is a "small number" compared The number of schools included, according to the first directive of the subject in the Ministry of Education, and the Russian Language Coordinator at the National Center for Educational Curriculum Development, Eng. Bassam Al-Tawil, who explained that the teachers who graduated from Russian universities are not specialized in teaching.
Al-Taweel told SANA that the ministry is training the existing cadres because they are not specialists in teaching methods and how to deal with the curriculum. It also seeks to give them grants to travel to Russia to specialize more in language and methods of teaching it in cooperation with the Russian Ministry of Education, where it developed an annual plan to train teachers and search for other solutions to supplement The teaching staff is within the staff of the ministry.
In order to avoid the lack of teachers, the Ministry also broadcasts serialized recorded lessons through the three educational platforms, where approximately 60 to 70 percent of the seventh to third secondary school curriculum was registered, in addition to lessons and television seminars on the educational satellite channel, which reached 15 seminars in the first semester and 10 seminars subsequent to the two certificates.
The Russian language curriculum was prepared with national experiences in coordination with the Russian side within the National Center for Educational Curriculum Development, taking into account the individual differences between students, as it was initially applied experimentally for the seventh grade according to the Russian Language Coordinator indicating that work is currently underway to prepare an activity book for students of grades seven, eight and nine and a teacher's guide in addition To prepare an activity book and teacher guide for the first, second and third secondary to avoid gaps in the curriculum.
From the “Ezz Al-Din Al-Tanoukhi” school in the Mazzeh area in Damascus, Al-Mawdah Ward Arafat School indicated that students are keen to learn the Russian language and interact with it in the classroom, and that the curriculum given to students is studied and takes into account individual differences between students and their different levels.
A number of eighth grade students considered that their study of the Russian language makes them more open to other cultures and provides them with new skills that may open up new job opportunities in the future for them, and the student Laith Barhoum said it is a new and different language that we suffered from difficulty in the beginning, but it becomes easier with time, while student Khaled Hariri suggested teaching it from Primary school because learning at an early age is better and faster.
Rehab Ali-Nour Youssef