Press Release, 13.11.2024

Photo by Alexander Miridonov/Kommersant

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced the preparation of a bill that would prohibit migrant children who do not know Russian from being admitted to schools. There is no doubt that this bill will be adopted: Vladimir Putin drew attention to the problem of migrant children’s poor knowledge of Russian, and the heads of Rosobrnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science) and the Human Rights Council proposed a “solution” – to ban their admission to schools. The Yabloko Party Analytical Centre decided to comment on this initiative because it is more harmful that foolish, and its implementation will lead to the opposite results.

According to research (see: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), it is the school that is the most productive means for learning a language, the main channel for the adaptation and integration of migrant children. The earlier children are immersed in the language environment, the easier their integration is. Most children master the language through school and their daily interaction with classmates and teachers. Moreover, it is through school that parents are socialised. For many housewives from migrant families, school is the only window to the outside world: they learn and assimilate the practices, rules, and norms of the host country through communication with their children and teachers.

The real problem is not the lack of knowledge of Russian when entering school, but the lack of specialised programmes for the adaptation of migrants. We have virtually no school courses in Russian as a foreign language. We have poor (if not any at all) training of teachers to work with migrants and multi-ethnic classes. We do not have additional and preparatory Russian language courses for migrant children. If children do not receive adequate language support, their academic performance and social integration become difficult. Where such programmes exist, the academic performance, life and career strategies of migrant children do not differ from the majority of their schoolmates.

The ban on attending school without knowledge of Russian virtually means that migrant children will stay at home, receive family education or not receive any education at all (in many cases, this is the same thing). By depriving migrant children of the opportunity to communicate with their classmates, we deprive them of incentives to understand Russian. Many will send their children to their homeland to their grandparents, and when the former reach adulthood, they will return to their parents in Russia with the same lack of knowledge of Russian, where they will face much greater barriers and misunderstanding. Religious fundamentalism grows exactly on this basis. By the way, in European countries all children must attend school. The legislation of 14 EU countries provides for criminal liability for parents for their children’s failure to attend school.

In addition, Vyacheslav Volodin’s initiative contradicts the law. Starting with the Constitution, Article 43 of which guarantees the right to universal access to basic general education, and ending with the federal law “On Education”, which guarantees the right to education regardless of gender, race, nationality, language and other circumstances. The above guarantees also apply to migrants – this is the principle of the social state. The Concept of the State Migration Policy and the Strategy of the State National Policy highlight as a key priority assistance to migrants in social and cultural adaptation and integration, including teaching Russian. The key word here is “assistance”, not “prohibition” or “barrier”.

Thus, the proposed structure does not solve a single problem: neither with social tension in schools (multi-ethnic classes will not go away), nor with saving budget funds (by saving a rouble on the integration of migrants, the state will spend ten roubles on security, crime prevention and the functioning of the penal system). That is, we get even less integration and even more risks in the end.