HSE and the educational reform in Russia: experiments on oneself

Modernization of education in post-soviet Russia surely had started before the formation of the Higher School of Economics. Many outstanding personalities who led the reforms in the early 1990s later came to work to HSE. The first Education Minister of new Russia, the author of the 1992 Law “On Education” Eduard Dneprov became chief researcher of the HSE Institute of Educational Development. Deputy Minister Vladimir Shadrikov, renowned in the 1980s for letting school teachers choose the best among several textbooks on a subject (earlier, in the soviet school they could only use one “approved” textbook), is now the academic supervisor of the HSE Faculty of Psychology.

The Higher School of Economics started proposing to the Russian Government its options for educational modernization since 1997. The “touchstone” was the organizational-economic reform project developed with the participation of Chancellor Yaroslav Kuzminov. Nobody had previously tried to seriously analyze the economics of education, while the authors of the project were the first to work out means of its optimization. Instead of paying small scholarships to all students without exclusion, it was proposed to pay big scholarships, but only to the needy or A-students. Instead of financing the School by the budget estimate, that is, independently of the number of students, they proposed per capita financing: the more students – the more money. The authors of the project calculated that more than 50% of the money “turning over” in education does not go through the educational institutions’ accounting departments (this is payment for additional classes or bribes), and drafted the ways of its “legalization”.

The implementation of this and other ideas started after the August 1998 Crisis when Vladimir Filippov was appointed Minister of Education. The first all-Russian meeting, which he held in Tumen right after the appointment, was dedicated to the economics of education, and Yaroslav Kuzminiv made the main report there, which was approved by university chancellors. During the times of Vladimir Filippov the Higher School of Economics turned into the “brain center” of modernization in education, and since then projects of reforms developed here have gone far beyond the framework of economics. They also comprise the contents and the structure of education, an independent assessment of its quality, issues of school public governance and many others. One of the key projects - the first standard of general education, according to which Russian schools have been working in the past few years – was developed under the guidance of Eduard Dneprov and Vladimir Shadrikov - HSE scholars, academicians of the Russian Academy of Education - and approved by Vladimir Filippov in March 2004, just before his resignation.

Yaroslav Kuzminov declared that all innovations proposed by the Higher School of Economics would first of all be realized under its own roof. In the early 90s, when all other Russian Universities continued by inertia to teach the soviet course of political economy, the Higher School of Economics taught macro- and micro-economics by the latest foreign textbooks. The University started experimenting on itself. This did not only mean innovations in the content of education, but also a transition to the European “bachelor plus master” system of higher education, the introduction of new distribution models of the scholarship fund and the wage fund. A system of bonuses and grants forms incentives for the research work of the university faculty. The strategic goal of HSE is to become a research university where education goes alongside science, which means that 100% of the faculty carry out academic research. This goal was put long before the integration of Higher School and science became one of the directions in the Federal Educational Policy.

In 2001 Russia launched the experiment of the Centralized State Examination (CSE) – an independent testing of the knowledge of school graduates and applicants to universities. HSE was one of the first universities which did not fear to take in graduates with CSE certificates without any additional tests. Leaders of HSE did much for the adoption of the Law on CSE in its present form, when independent examinations are mandatory both for school graduates and university applicants, and universities are obliged to enroll students only by the CSE results (an exclusion is made for universities, where the number of applicants with high-grade certificates is too high). Starting from 2008 the CSE results will be mandatory for applications to all Russian universities, and in 2009 the exam will be taken by all the graduates of 11th grades.

In 2002, HSE Rector Yaroslav Kuzminov was awarded the Order of Honor

Participation of the Higher School of Economics in the reform of school education is not confined to the development of reforming ideas for the federal government. The Higher School of Economics was the lead organization of the TACIS (Technical Assistance for the Commonwealth of Independent States) project for the retraining of educational administrators – school head masters and officers of regional educational departments throughout Russia. The Perm branch of HSE served as the basis for the creation of a university district: the departments of that branch launched retraining courses for the teachers and school head masters of 20 Perm schools. The development strategy of the Perm educational system was worked out with the participation of Lev Lyubimov, deputy academic supervisor of HSE.

In 2004, after Vladimir Putin was elected for the second term, changes took place in the federal structure of managing Russian education. In the result of the administrative reform (which was also worked out in the Higher School of Economics) the RF Education Ministry was merged with the “scientific” and “innovative” subdivisions of the RF Ministry of science, industry and technologies. The name of the resulting hybrid Ministry – the RF Ministry for education and Science – demonstrated that the government has finally aimed at the integration of education and science, the necessity of which has always been emphasized by HSE representatives.

Under the roof of the Ministry responsible for the formation of the state educational and research policy, three federal agencies realizing this policy were formed (Rosobrazovanie, Rosnauka and Rospatent) and the Federal service for the supervision in education and science (Rosobrnadzor). And though the new Minister for Education and Science Andrei Fursenko declared that the expert organizations were “equidistant” from his Ministry, the same way as Vladimir Putin declared the “equidistance” of oligarchs from the authority, HSE is still playing a leading role in the development of the State Educational Policy, cooperating with the ministry, the agencies and Rosobrnadzor. Analytical reports on the status of the educational system issued by HSE (for example, the annual monitoring of educational economics) are used as reference books by Ministerial officials.

It seems that the main idea brought by Andrey Fursenko to the Ministry is that the system of education cannot be “a thing in itself”. Both higher and secondary schools operate according to the order of the State, personality and the civil society as a whole. For the vocational education it is especially essential to take into account employers’ requirements – hence participation of business representatives is necessary in the drafting of curricula and the assessment of educational quality. Making the school transparent to the society is possible through Governing Boards consisting of representatives of the public and having real authority – from the formation of the curriculum to the selection of tutors. The author of the Governing Boards concept was Anatoly Pinsky, director of the HSE Center for social-economic development, who died in 2006. It was with his assistance that the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area (Yugra) adopted the regional Law on School Governing Boards.

Meeting of the Russian Public Council on Education Development (ROSRO), March 29, 2007

Other outstanding projects were also drafted under the leadership of Anatoly Pinsky – for example, transition to profile education in senior secondary school when the student can pay more attention to studying the interesting to him/her subjects, the transition to the sectoral system of wages in higher education. The meaning of the sectoral system is in that the teacher’s wages should depend not only on the number of given lessons and qualification rating. If the teacher is really good at teaching a difficult subject, if he (she) is highly appreciated by other teachers and pupils, this teacher may be paid much more than his less successful colleagues. The sectoral wage system is now introduced in different regions in the way of an experiment.

In September 2005 President Vladimir Putin declared the realization of four priority national projects – “Health”, “Accessible housing”, “Agriculture” and “Education”. According to Minister Andrei Fursenko, the “Education” national project is not the distribution of funds or even support of the best, this is a catalyst of educational reforms. The national project envisages grants issued to teachers and educational institutions that use innovations in their daily work. In 2006 the Project selected 10 thousand innovative teachers, 3 thousand innovative schools and 17 innovative universities, including HSE. In 2007 the national project was widened: it incorporated a competition of innovative technical colleges and vocational technical schools, as well as a competition of regions implementing comprehensive projects for the modernization of education. The gist of all these competitions is “money in exchange for liabilities”: the winners take the obligation to introduce innovations approved by the federal center.

One of the directions of the “Education” national project lies in the creation of federal super-universities in Rostov and Krasnoyarsk, under the roof of which the best regional universities are to be united, with special conditions set for their development. These universities will use in their work the experience of Russia’s leading universities, including Higher School of Economics. In March 2007 a HSE delegation led by the Chancellor visited Krasnoyarsk, were agreements were signed on cooperation between HSE and the Siberian Federal University. Another direction of the national project – the creation of new business schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg – will surely also rely on the participation of HSE professors.

The Higher School of Economics today is not just a powerful center of expertise in the sphere of educational policy and consultant to the authorities, but also a forum for the discussion of innovative ideas, projects of reforms. Its regular guests are not only the Minister, his deputies and directors of the key Ministerial Departments, but also Chancellors of universities, heads of educational authorities of the constituent territories, school head masters, representatives of science and business. HSE lecture halls serve for the discussion of different, most vital ideas for Russian education – from the formation of scientific and pedagogical human resources to the support of talented children. As a rule, in the course of discussing any topic they refer, among others, to the own experience of HSE, which uses in its work innovations which will some day become inherent to the whole educational system in Russia.