Moscow, 25 January: Economic conditions in this country put certain constraints on the universal right to education, guaranteed by the Russian constitution, Education Minister Vladimir Filippov said live on national television today during a televised conference on the rights of Russian children.
As he answered a question from a schoolgirl in Blagoveshchensk, the Far East, Filippov admitted that economic problems put some constraints on the opportunities to get education.
"Many people simply cannot afford to buy an air ticket and come to Moscow to enrol for college entrance exams," he said.
Also, far from all parents could find enough money to pay to private teachers who prepare school students for university and college exams, or to pay for private apartments while their children are studying, since many schools of higher learning do not have hostels rooms for all students, Filippov said.
He recalled that the State Council, a consultative and decision-making body that reports to President [Vladimir] Putin, had raised the issue recently, and the government was taking a range of urgent measures as part of the national education system reform.
One of them is to raise the student grants, Filippov said. With the beginning of next academic year (1 September 2003 - ITAR-TASS), an averaged academic grant will total R1,000, he said.
The televised conference on the rights of children is a unique action for Russia. Its most important participants, the school students, have done researches on how the legal rights of children are observed at their schools, cities and regions.
The televised conference has embraced eight time zones from the Far East to the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, with children telling the regional leaders and federal officials about the problems that schools in their areas come across...